She was talking of certain events of the night before.

’It was about half-past twelve—­I’d just got into bed—­when the servant knocks at my door.  “Please, mum,” she says, “there’s a policeman wants to see master.”  You may think if I wasn’t frightened out of my life!  I don’t think it was two minutes before I got downstairs, and there the policeman stood in the hall.  I told him I was Mrs. Rodman, and then he said a young man called Henry Mutimer had got locked up for making a disturbance outside a music hall, and he’d sent to my husband to bail him out.  Well, just as we were talking in comes Willis.  Rare and astonished he was to see me with all my things huddled on and a policeman in the house.  We did so laugh afterwards; he said he thought I’d been committing a robbery.  But he wouldn’t bail ’Arry, and I couldn’t blame him.  And now he says ’Arry ’ll have to do as best he can.  He won’t get him another place.’

‘He’s lost his place too?’ asked the mother gloomily.

’He was dismissed yesterday.  He says that’s why he went drinking too much.  Out of ten days that he’s been in the place he’s missed two and hasn’t been punctual once.  I think you might have seen he got off at the proper time in the morning, mother.’

‘What’s the good o’ blamin’ me?’ exclaimed the old woman fretfully.  ‘A deal o’ use it is for me to talk.  If I’m to be held ’countable he doesn’t live here no longer; I know that much.’

’Dick was a fool to pay his fine.  I’d have let him go to prison for seven days; it would have given him a lesson.’

Mrs. Mutimer sighed deeply, and lost herself in despondent thought.  Alice sipped her tea and went on with her voluble talk.

’I suppose he’ll show up some time to-night unless Dick keeps him.  But he can’t do that, neither, unless he makes him sleep on the sofa in their sitting-room.  A nice come-down for my lady, to be living in two furnished rooms!  But it’s my belief they’re not so badly off as they pretend to be.  It’s all very well for Dick to put on his airs and go about saying he’s given up every farthing; he doesn’t get me to believe that.  He wouldn’t go paying away his pounds so readily.  And they have attendance from the landlady; Mrs. Adela doesn’t soil her fine finger’s, trust her.  You may depend upon it, they’ve plenty.  She wouldn’t speak a word for us; if she cared to, she could have persuaded Mr. Eldon to let me keep my money, and then there wouldn’t have been all this law bother.’

‘What bother’s that?’

’Why, Dick says he’ll go to law with my husband to recover the money he paid him when we were married.  It seems he has to answer for it, because he’s what they call the administrator, and Mr. Eldon can compel him to make it all good again.’

‘But I thought you said you’d given it all up?’

’That’s my own money, what was settled on me.  I don’t see what good it was to me; I never had a penny of it to handle.  Now they want to get all the rest out of us.  How are we to pay back the money that’s spent and gone, I’d like to know?  Willis says they’ll just have to get it if they can.  And here’s Dick going on at me because we don’t go into lodgings!  I don’t leave the house before I’m obliged, I know that much.  We may as well be comfortable as long as we can.