Part 10 (1/2)

She rose and gathered together her paraphernalia, and he saw that she earing the damnable white apron The close atmosphere of the home enveloped and stifled hi interior froe jolly freedoarettes and masculinity of that private roorimly and resentfully ”Very i I shall probably have to go to London”

He said this just to startle her

”It will do you all the good in the world,” she replied angelically, but unstartled ”It's just what you need!” And she gazed at hih his welfare and felicity were her sole preoccupation

”I ht have to stop there quite a while,” he insisted

”If you ask ood”

So saying, she retired, having expressed no curiosity whatever as to the nature of the very important business in London

For a , he went to the table and extinguished the laht in the hall showed hiain ”Oh, very well then!” he o to London! I'o to London!”

CHAPTER III

WILKINS'S

I

The early adventures of Alderular, and to hi, that they must be recounted in so express from Knype, on the Monday week after his visit to the music-hall In the meantime he had had some correspondence with Mr Bryany, more poetic than precise, about the option, and had informed Mr Bryany that he would arrive in London several days before the option expired But he had not given a definite date The whole affair, indeed, was aue; and, despite his assurances to his wife that the ard his trip to London as a business trip at all, but rather as a sie of air The one certain item in the whole situation was that he had in his pocket a quite considerable sum of actual money, destined--he hoped, but was not sure--to take up the option at the proper hour

Nellie, impeccable to the last, accompanied him in the motor to Knype, the main-line station The drive, superficially pleasant, was in reality very disconcerting to him For nine days the household had talked in apparent cheerfulness of father's visit to London, as though it were an occasion for joy on father's behalf, tempered by affectionate sorrow for his absence The official theory was that all was for the best in the best of all possible homes, and this theory was admirably maintained And yet everybody knew--even to Maisie--that it was not so; everybody knew that the master and the mistress of the ho in a terrific silent and mysterious altercation, which in some as connected with the visit to London

So far as Edward Henry was concerned he had been hoping for so the drive to Knype, which offered the last chance of a real concord No such event occurred They conversed with the same false cordiality as had -bite On that evening Nellie had suddenly transforel, and not once had she descended froh estate At least daily she had kissed him--what kisses! Kisses that were not kisses!

Tasteless mockeries, like non-alcoholic ale! He could have killed her, but he could not put a finger on a fault in her marvellous wifely behaviour; she would have died victorious

So that his freakish excursion was not starting very auspiciously

And, waiting with her for the train on the platform at Knype, he felt this more and more His old clerk, Penkethman, was there to receive certain final instructions on Thrift Club matters, and the sweetness of Nellie's attitude towards the ancient man, and the ancient man's nave pleasure therein, positively an to think: ”Is she going to spoil my trip forto London And Nellie's saccharine assurances to Brindley that Edward Henry really needed a change just about completed Edward Henry's desperation Not even the uproarious advent of two jolly wholesale grocers, Messieurs Garvin & Quorrall, also going to London, could effectually lighten his pessimism

When the train steamed in, Edward Henry, in fear, postponed the ulti as possible He allowed Brindley to climb before him into the second-class coe for the porter; and then he turned to Nellie and stooped She raised her white veil and raised the angelic face They kissed--the sa her lipsBut suddenly she put the pressure It was nothing nobody could have noticed it

She herself pretended that she had not done it Edward Henry had to pretend not to notice it But to hi She had relented She had surrendered The sign had come from her She wished him to enjoy his visit to London

He said to himself:

”Dashed if I don't write to her every day!”