-Ida and May and my own sisters too. Yet,
hang it all, in a way I suppose they're right, because of the kids, you
know." He tossed his cigar into the grate and lighted another, rather
carefully. "You fellows who have knocked about, you get ideas and
ways----. But, they won't do here, Jimmy, believe me." He paused again,
to help himself to another whisky, then went on, hurriedly, "This work
of yours, it's a bit uphill. Are you all right for cash? If not come to
me."

Jimmy flushed. He wanted some money badly, how badly only a man in his
position, the lover of Lalage, could know; but still he could not take
it from Fenton, for that purpose. Joseph would never understand his
motives. So he stood up, suddenly.

"Thanks, very much, Joe; but I can rub along, at least I think so. If I
am dead stuck, I will come to you; but I believe I can pull through."
Then he said good night, and went upstairs, to think of Lalage, and to
curse his own idiocy in not taking the proffered loan. Twenty pounds
would have been nothing to his brother-in-law, yet to Lalage and himself
it would have meant a new start. Before he lay down he had made up his
mind to ask Joseph for it, after all, and he went to sleep with that
resolution in his mind; but when he awoke in the morning things somehow
seemed different, and before breakfast was over he had changed his mind.
This was his world, and these were his own people, living ordered lives,
with soles and grilled kidneys for breakfast, and family plate on the
table, knowing nothing of ham and beef shops, or of milkmen who demanded
cash in exchange for their milk. He belonged to them, he was one of
them, sharing their principles and their prejudices, worshipping their
gods, as his ancestors and theirs had done. What real kinship had he
with Lalage, who made her breakfast tea out of a quarter-pound packet
bought the evening before at the little general shop round the corner,
and took an obvious delight in the sixpenny haddock they had purchased
off the barrow with the glaring oil lamps over it?

And yet, when the postman brought him no letter from that same Lalage,
he grew silent and restless, as his sister's eyes were quick to note.
When Joseph had departed to his office, he himself went to the
smoking-room and wrote three whole sheets to the girl who lived in the
flat, for the first time throwing all prudence to the winds, and saying
the things he felt. His pen travelled quickly, and, whilst he was
wr