“No,” said Simmons; “she ain’t in now.”

“You ain’t her ’usband, are ye?”

“Yus.”

The man took his pipe from his mouth and grinned silently and long.  “Blimy,” he said at length, “you look like the sort o’ bloke she’d like,” and with that he grinned again.  Then, seeing that Simmons made ready to shut the door, he put a foot on the sill and a hand against the panel.  “Don’t be in a ’hurry, matey,” he said; “I come ‘ere t’ ’ave a little talk with you, man to man, d’ ye see?” And he frowned fiercely.

Tommy Simmons felt uncomfortable, but the door would not shut, so he parleyed.  “Wotjer want?” he asked, “I dunno you.”

“Then, if you’ll excuse the liberty, I’ll interdooce meself, in a manner of speaking.”  He touched his cap with a bob of mock humility.  “I’m Bob Ford,” he said, “come back out o’ kingdom come so to say.  Me as went down with the Mooltan—­safe dead five year gone.  I come to see my wife.”

During this speech Thomas Simmons’s jaw was dropping lower and lower.  At the end of it he poked his fingers up through his hair, looked down at the mat, then up at the fanlight, then out into the street, then hard at his visitor.  But he found nothing to say.

“Come to see my wife,” the man repeated.  “So now we can talk it over—­as man to man.”

Simmons slowly shut his mouth, and led the way upstairs mechanically, his fingers still in his hair.  A sense of the state of affairs sank gradually into his brain, and the small devil woke again.  Suppose this man was Ford?  Suppose he did claim his wife?  Would it be a knock-down blow?  Would it hit him out?—­or not?  He thought of the trousers, the tea-things, the mangling, the knives, the kettles, and the windows; and he thought of them in the way of a backslider.

On the landing Ford clutched at his arm, and asked in a hoarse whisper, “’Ow long ’fore she’s back?”

“’Bout an hour, I expect,” Simmons replied, having first of all repeated the question in his own mind.  And then he opened the parlour door.

“Ah,” said Ford, looking about him, “you’ve bin pretty comf’table.  Them chairs an’ things,” jerking his pipe toward them, “was hers—­mine, that is to say, speakin’ straight, and man to man.”  He sat down, puffing meditatively at his pipe, and presently, “Well,” he continued, “’ere I am agin, ol’ Bob Ford, dead an’ done for—­gone down in the Mooltan.  On’y I ain’t done for, see?” And he pointed the stem of his pipe at Simmons’s waistcoat.  “I ain’t done for, ‘cause why?  Cons’kence o’ bein’ picked up by a ol’ German sailin’-’utch an’ took to ’Frisco ’fore the mast.  I’ve ‘ad a few years o’ knockin’ about since then, an’ now”—­looking hard at Simmons—­“I’ve come back to see my wife.”

“She—­she don’t like smoke in ’ere,” said Simmons, as it were at random.

“No, I bet she don’t,” Ford answered, taking his pipe from his mouth and holding it low in his hand.  “I know ’Anner.  ‘Ow d’ you find ’er?  Do she make ye clean the winders?”