Presently he saw the singer pass down the hall, and join her husband, who now, his labors ended, was seeking refreshment at the bar.  She was a good-looking girl—­still only a girl, and apparently under twenty—­quietly dressed, yet looking anything but quiet.  But that might have been due to her fringe, which was, so to speak, a prominent-feature in her face.  She was tall and well-made, with large features, an ample cheek, a full eye, and a wide mouth.  A good-natured-looking girl, and though her mouth was wide, it suggested smiles.  The husband was exchanging a little graceful badinage with the barmaid when she joined him, and perhaps this made her look a little cross.  “She’s jealous, too,” said Mr. Chalker, observant; “all the better.”  Yet a face which, on the whole, was prepossessing and good natured, and betokened a disposition to make the best of the world.

“How long has she been married?” Mr. Chalker asked the proprietor.

“Only about a month or so.”

“Ah!”

Mr. Chalker proceeded to talk business, and gave no further hint of any interest in the newly-married pair.

“Now, Joe,” said the singer, with a freezing glance at the barmaid, “are you going to stand here all night?”

Joe drank off his glass and followed his wife into the street.  They walked side by side in silence, until they reached their lodgings.  Then she threw off her hat and jacket, and sat down on the horsehair sofa and said abruptly: 

“I can’t do it, Joe; and I won’t.  So don’t ask me.”

“Wait a bit—­wait a bit, Lotty, my love.  Don’t be in a hurry, now.  Don’t say rash things, there’s a good girl.”  Joe spoke quite softly, as if he were not the least angry, but, perhaps, a little hurt.  “There’s not a bit of a hurry.  You needn’t decide to-day, nor yet to-morrow.”

“I couldn’t do it,” she said.  “Oh, it’s a dreadful, wicked thing even to ask me.  And only five weeks to-morrow since we married!”

“Lotty, my dear, let us be reasonable.”  He still spoke quite softly.  “If we are not to go on like other people; if we are to be continually bothering our heads about honesty, and that rubbish, we shall be always down in the world.  How do other people make money and get on?  By humbug, my dear.  By humbug.  As for you, a little play-acting is nothing.”

“But I am not the man’s daughter, and my own father’s alive and well.”

“Look here, Lotty.  You are always grumbling about the music-halls.”

“Well, and good reason to grumble.  If you heard those ballet girls talk, and see how they go on at the back, you’d grumble.  As for the music—­” She laughed, as if against her will.  “If anybody had told me six months ago—­me, that used to go to the Cathedral Service every afternoon—­that I should be a Lion Masher at a music-hall and go on dressed in tights, I should have boxed his ears for impudence.”

“Why, you don’t mean to tell me, Lotty, that you wish you had stuck to the moldy old place, and gone on selling music over the counter?”