“Why, I’m uncommon cold,” he said in answer to his wife’s inquiries after his welfare. “And so would you be too, if you’d come up from Leeds since you’d had your dinner. What, John, are you there? The two of you are making yourself snug enough, I suppose, with something hot?”
“Not a drop he’s had yet since he’s been in the house,” said Mrs. Moulder. “And he’s hardly as much as darkened the door since you left it.” And Mrs. Moulder added, with some little hesitation in her voice, “Mrs. Smiley is coming in tonight, Moulder.”
“The d⸺ she is! There’s always something of that kind when I gets home tired out, and wants to be comfortable. I mean to have my supper to myself, as I likes it, if all the Mother Smileys in London choose to come the way. What on earth is she coming here for this time of night?”
“Why, Moulder, you know.”
“No; I don’t know. I only know this, that when a man’s used up with business he don’t want to have any of that nonsense under his nose.”
“If you mean me—” began John Kenneby.
“I don’t mean you; of course not; and I don’t mean anybody. Here, take my coats, will you? and let me have a pair of slippers. If Mrs. Smiley thinks that I’m going to change my pants, or put myself about for her—”
“Laws, Moulder, she don’t expect that.”
“She won’t get it anyway. Here’s John dressed up as if he was going to a box in the the‑atre. And you—why should you be going to expense, and knocking out things that costs money, because Mother Smiley’s coming? I’ll Smiley her.”
“Now, Moulder—” But Mrs. Moulder knew that it was of no use speaking to him at the present moment. Her task should be this—to feed and cosset him if possible into good humour before her guest should arrive. Her praises of Mrs. Smiley had been very fairly true. But nevertheless she was a lady who had a mind and voice of her own, as any lady has a right to possess who draws in her own right two hundred a year out of a brick-field in the Kingsland Road. Such a one knows that she is above being snubbed, and Mrs. Smiley knew this of herself as well as any lady; and if Moulder, in his wrath, should call her Mother Smiley, or give her to understand that he regarded her as an old woman, that lady would probably walk herself off in a great dudgeon—herself and her share in the brick-field. To tell the truth, Mrs. Smiley required that considerable deference should be paid to her.
Mrs. Moulder knew well what was her husband’s present ailment. He had dined as early as one, and on his journey up from Leeds to London had refreshed himself with drink only. That last glass of brandy which he had taken at the Peterborough station had made him cross. If she could get him to swallow some hot food before Mrs. Smiley came, all might yet be well.
“And what’s it to be, M.?” she said in her most insinuating voice—“there’s a lovely chop downstairs, and there’s nothing so quick as that.”
“Chop!” he said, and it was all he did say at the moment.
“There’s a ’am in beautiful cut,” she went on, showing by the urgency of her voice how anxious she was on the subject.
For the moment he did not answer her at all, but sat facing the fire, and running his fat fingers through his uncombed hair. “Mrs. Smiley!” he said; “I remember when she was kitchen-maid at old Pott’s.”
“She ain’t nobody’s kitchen-maid now,” said Mrs. Moulder, almost prepared to be angry in the defence of her friend.
“And I never could make out when it was that Smiley married her—that is, if he ever did.”
“Now, Moulder, that’s shocking of you. Of course he married her. She and I is nearly an age as possible, though I think she is a year over me. She says not, and it ain’t nothing to me. But I remember the wedding as if it was yesterday. You and I had never set eyes on each other then, M.” This last she added in a plaintive tone, hoping to soften him.
“Are you going to keep me here all night without anything?” he then said. “Let me have some whisky—hot, with;—and don’t stand
