he saw forty cigarettes in her hand, disgusted her. It was
like the pigs in the sty at feeding time--squealing--jostling.

In his relief, he became quite charming. He began to joke, and "be good"
just like a child who had worried all day for a treat and been granted
it by a weak mother who had reached the limit of endurance. He joked and
told her stories and was more pleasant than she had ever seen him.

"You are a darling, you know, and you do spoil me, girlie," he said,
kissing her hand. "You forgive me for being a baby, don't you?"

She could not say she didn't, as she smoothed the damp hair from his
forehead.

In her mood caused by his brightening spirits she felt she could not go
on reading "L'Assommoir." She glanced at the Sunday papers and put them
down. Louis looked at her and laughed.

"Now you've got the fidgets," he said. "Let's do something."

"I've nothing to read but that Zola thing, and a book on Symbolism that
Dr. Angus sent. And I don't want to read a bit. Louis, we'll have to do
something, you and I. We're rusting. We'll have to get away."

"In this heat?"

"In anything. I'm like old Ulysses. I cannot rest from travel. What is
it--'How dull it is to pause, to make an end, the rust unburnished--'
I've forgotten most of it. But there's one bit that appeals to me a
great deal--'Life piled on life were all too little--' I want to do
millions of things in my life, don't you?"

He lifted his eyebrows at her, and smiled placidly over a cloud of
smoke.

"Let's go along to those agencies to-morrow and say we'll be rouseabouts
without any wages, just for food. I'd love to be a rouseabout. It sounds
so beautifully active. 'Rouseabout'! I think John the Baptist was a
rouseabout, don't you? The rouseabout of the Lord! Oh Louis, let's be
that, shall we?"

"You'd never stand it."

"Well, anyway, after this week we've got to do something."

He immediately became petulant and worried again, so she told him
blithely that she would arrange things. She grew to do this more and
more as she knew him better. The cigarette famine that had made such a
misery of the day was only typical of many things; anything that caused
him the least anxiety lost him both nerve and temper, and he was only in
the way. So in self-defence she began to protect him from everything,
simply making plans and trying to get him to fall in with them with the
least possible friction. And this was not very easy: he disagreed with
her arra