"Come here, chit. Let me look at that shawl."
She obeyed. She knelt acquiescent. He put his watch back into his pocket, and fingered the shawl.
"I suppose one’ll be allowed to grumble at Georgie for locking his bedroom door." And she said it with a touch of mockery in her clear, precise voice, as though twitting him, and Ingpen too, about their absurd theoretical sense of honour towards children. And there was a touch of fine bitterness in her voice also,--a reminiscence of the old Hilda. Incalculable creature! Who could have guessed that she would make such a remark at such a moment? In his mind he dashed George to pieces. But as a wise male he ignored all her implications and answered casually, mildly, with an affirmative.
"What were you talking such a long time to Johnnie Orgreave about?"
"Talking a long time to Johnnie Orgreave? Oh! D’you mean at the front-door? Why, it wasn’t half a minute! He happened to mention a piece of land down at Shawport that I had a sort of a notion of buying."
"Well, supposing I had to build a new works?"
"I’ve only just begun to think of it myself. You see, if I’m to go in for lithography as it ought to be gone in for, I can’t possibly stay at the shop. I must have more room, and a lot more. And it would be cheaper to build than to rent."
"You can’t stand still in business. Must either go forward or go back."
"It seems to me it’s very risky. I wondered what you were hiding from me."
"My dear girl, I was not hiding anything from you," he protested.
"Yes, and I’ve no doubt the Halls would be very glad to get rid of it. Who told you about it?"
"Of course it would be a fine thing for him too."
"But I’d asked him if he knew of any land going cheap."
She shrugged her shoulders, and shrugged away the disinterestedness of all Orgreaves.
"Anyone could get the better of you," she said.
He resented this estimate of himself as a good-natured simpleton. He assuredly did not want to quarrel, but he was obliged to say:
An acerbity scarcely intentional somehow entered into his tone. As soon as he heard it he recognised the tone as the forerunner of altercations.
"Of course!" she insisted, superiorly, and then went on: "We’re all right as we are. We spend too much money, but I daresay we’re all right. If you go in for a lot of new things you may lose all we’ve got, and then where shall we be?"