Somehow Ellen didn’t look right, standing there opposite him.  Her shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had fallen in a little.  She had never looked so bad—­not even when they had been half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worked.

“Yes,” she said briefly, “I’ve a pain in my head, at the back of my neck.  It doesn’t often leave me; it gets worse when anything upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler.”

“He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!” said Bunting crossly.  “I’d a good mind to tell him so, too.  But I must say, Ellen, I wonder he took you in—­he didn’t me!”

“Well, you had no chance he should—­you knew who it was,” she said slowly.

And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right.  Joe Chandler had already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw their cleverly disguised visitor.

“Those big black moustaches,” he went on complainingly, “and that black wig—­why, ’twas too ridic’lous—­that’s what I call it!”

“Not to anyone who didn’t know Joe,” she said sharply.

“Well, I don’t know.  He didn’t look like a real man—­nohow.  If he’s a wise lad, he won’t let our Daisy ever see him looking like that!” and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.

He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased.  It was a dull, unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt.  And Joe was earning good money.  They wouldn’t have long to wait, these two young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he, Bunting, and Daisy’s mother had had to do, for ever so long before they could be married.  No, there was no reason why they shouldn’t be spliced quite soon—­if so the fancy took them.  And Bunting had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.

But there was plenty of time.  Daisy wouldn’t be eighteen till the week after next.  They might wait till she was twenty.  By that time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite a tidy little bit of money.

“What are you smiling at?” said his wife sharply.

And he shook himself.  “I—­smiling?  At nothing that I knows of.”  Then he waited a moment.  “Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler.  He is gone on her, ain’t he?”

“Gone?” And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly laugh.  “Gone, Bunting?” she repeated.  “Why, he’s out o’ sight —­right, out of sight!”

Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on, twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:—­ “I suppose he’ll be going over this afternoon to fetch her?  Or—­or d’you think he’ll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?”

“Inquest?  What inquest?” He looked at her puzzled.

“Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King’s Cross.”