“Does he scrub floors?” asked Marcella in awestruck tones.

“It’s all he’s good for.  He never earns a penny.  He goes and tacks on to any fellow he sees looking a bit flushed with money and boozes with him all day.  He often meets a fellow that knew us when we had the hotel, and he gets a beer or two out of him.”

“Oh, I am sorry, Mrs. King,” began Marcella, but Mrs. King laughed a little harshly.

“I don’t mind so much now, kid—­got past it.  So long as my back don’t trouble me too much.  The boys are very good to me—­they put him to bed if he’s dead drunk.  If he isn’t dead drunk I won’t sleep with him, because he’s always forward and vulgar when he’s only half there.  Then he haves to sleep on the sofa in the dining-room.  Next day he gets up and cleans the grates and scrubs for me.  If he didn’t he wouldn’t get any money out of me—­and well he knows it.”

“But do you give him money for drink?”

“Yes.  But not till he’s done his scrubbing.  You see, being in the hotel business all his life, he can’t get started of a morning till he’s had a dog’s hair.  So he’ll scrub all three storeys down for thruppence.  When he’s had one drink, and is safe inside a hotel, he’s got sauce enough to raise drinks out of anyone.  But you know, whenever there’s a new chum about that he can get thruppence out of, it’s poor Ma for the scrubbing.  And my back’s just as bad as bad can be!”

The fire was not very bright.  Marcella wished Louis’s chops would cook more quickly.  She wanted to get upstairs.

“It’s dreadful being married to a man like that,” said Marcella.

“It is,” said Mrs. King, planting her iron viciously on Mr. King’s shirt that she was ironing.  “I used to try to stop him once.  Only you get disheartened in time, don’t you, kid?  The times I’ve started a new home and had it sold up under me!  Six homes I’ve had and this is the seventh.  And the times I’ve trusted him, only to get laughed at for being a soft.  Now all I do is to feel damn glad to get him off my hands for the day.  We’ve made that a hard and fast rule.  I’ll do for him, and give him a meal of a Sunday when the hotels are closed and see to his washing, and let him sleep in my bed when he’s drunk enough not to get vulgar.  In return he does the scrubbing and the grates, and I find him in liveners—­”

“Oh, my goodness—­do you love him?” asked Marcella, staring at her.

It was Mrs. King’s turn to stare.

Then she laughed loudly, a little hysterically, until tears came into her eyes as she stood with her iron poised.

“Love him?  By cripes, no!  I’d as soon think of loving one of them bugs the Dagoes leave in your bed when they have a room for the night.”

“Why did you marry him, then?”

Mrs. King put down her iron and stared out through the door into the sun-baked courtyard where washing flapped and bleached and hens scratched in the dust.  It seemed as though she had never thought about it before.