had stopped at a dingy row of workmen's
houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a
light showed. So far as I could see, someone pulled up the blind and
for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked
for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken
through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him
too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by
setting off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going
home.

Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I
doubt that this was some discreditable love affair of William's? His
solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was
genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told
her that he was detained nightly in the club till three.

I was miserable next day and blamed the devilled kidneys for it.
Whether William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had
two plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his
club: the one, that, as he had made me lose a bet, I would punish him;
the other, that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes.

Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that----.
Well, I seemed to see his dying wife in it.

I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club.
Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced
to see the girl Jenny coming, and----. No; let me tell the truth,
though the whole club reads; I was waiting for her.

"How is William's wife to-day?" I asked.

"She told me to nod three times," the little slattern replied; "but she
looked like nothink but a dead one till she got the brandy."

"Hush, child!" I said, shocked. "You don't know how the dead look."

"Bless yer," she answered, "don't I just! Why, I've helped to lay 'em
out. I'm going on seven."

"Is William good to his wife?"

"Course he is. Ain't she his missis?"

"Why should that make him good to her?" I asked cynically, out of my
knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never
had my opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers,
fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and looking up wonderingly,
said:

"Ain't you green--just!"

"When does William reach home at night?"

"'Tain't night; it's morning. When I wakes up at half dark and half
light and hears a door shu