TO-MORROW
Page: 17

day do?" he queried at last.

"You didn't understand me!" she exclaimed,
impatiently. The clear streak of light under the
clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped
slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried
everything of the whispering woman and the
attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of
their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress.

He squared his shoulders; the broad-brimmed
shadow of a hat sat cavalierly on his head. "Awk-
ward this, eh?" he appealed to her. "To-morrow?
Well, well! Never heard tell of anything like this.
It's all to-morrow, then, without any sort of to-day,
as far as I can see."

She remained still and mute.

"And you have been encouraging this funny
notion," he said.

"I never contradicted him."

"Why didn't you?"

"What for should I?" she defended herself.
"It would only have made him miserable. He
would have gone out of his mind."

"His mind!" he muttered, and heard a short
nervous laugh from her.

"Where was the harm? Was I to quarrel with
the poor old man? It was easier to half believe it
myself."

"Aye, aye," he meditated, intelligently. "I
suppose the old chap got around you somehow with
his soft talk. You are good-hearted."

Her hands moved up in the dark nervously.
"And it might have been true. It was true. It
has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we
have been waiting for."

She drew a breath, and he said, good-humour-
edly: "Aye, with the door shut. I wouldn't care
if . . . And you think he could be brought round
to recognise me . . . Eh? What? . . . You
could do it? In a week you say? H'm, I daresay
you could--but do you think I could hold out a
week in this dead-alive place? Not me! I want
either hard work, or an all-fired racket, or more
space than there is in the whole of England. I
have been in this place, though, once before, and for
more than a week. The old man was advertising
for me then, and a chum I had with me had a no-
tion of getting a couple quid out of him by writ-
ing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did
not come off, though. We had to clear out--and