hint he did—­that he shouldn’t like her to overwork herself, tailoring being bad for the eyes, and there was a new tailor’s in the Mile End Road, very cheap, where . . .  “Ho yus,” she retorted, “you’re very consid’rit I dessay sittin’ there actin’ a livin’ lie before your own wife Thomas Simmons as though I couldn’t see through you like a book a lot you care about overworkin’ me as long as your turn’s served throwin’ away money like dirt in the street on a lot o’ swindlin’ tailors an’ me workin’ and’ slavin’ ’ere to save a ‘a’penny an’ this is my return for it any one ’ud think you could pick up money in the ‘orse-road an’ I b’lieve I’d be thought better of if I laid in bed all day like some would that I do.”  So that Thomas Simmons avoided the subject, nor even murmured when she resolved to cut his hair.

So his placid fortune endured for years.  Then there came a golden summer evening when Mrs. Simmons betook herself with a basket to do some small shopping, and Simmons was left at home.  He washed and put away the tea-things, and then he fell to meditating on a new pair of trousers, finished that day, and hanging behind the parlour door.  There they hung, in all their decent innocence of shape in the seat, and they were shorter of leg, longer of waist, and wilder of pattern than he had ever worn before.  And as he looked on them the small devil of Original Sin awoke and clamoured in his breast.  He was ashamed of it, of course, for well he knew the gratitude he owed his wife for those same trousers, among other blessings.  Still, there the small devil was, and the small devil was fertile in base suggestions, and could not be kept from hinting at the new crop of workshop gibes that would spring at Tommy’s first public appearance in such things.

“Pitch ’em in the dust-bin!” said the small devil at last.  “It’s all they’re fit for.”

Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a moment thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of discipline.  Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing that the front door was standing open, probably the fault of the child downstairs.  Now a front door standing open was a thing that Mrs. Simmons would not abide:  it looked low.  So Simmons went down, that she might not be wroth with him for the thing when she came back; and, as he shut the door, he looked forth into the street.

A man was loitering on the pavement, and prying curiously about the door.  His face was tanned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his unbraced blue trousers, and well back on his head he wore the high-crowned peaked cap, topped with a knob of wool, which is affected by Jack ashore about the docks.  He lurched a step nearer to the door, and “Mrs. Ford ain’t in, is she?” he said.

Simmons stared at him for a matter of five seconds, and then said, “Eh?”

“Mrs. Ford as was, then—­Simmons now, ain’t it?”

He said this with a furtive leer that Simmons neither liked nor understood.