TO-MORROW
Page: 20

ing that row? 'Bessie, Bessie.' It's in your
house."

"It's for me," she said, with indifference.

He stepped aside, out of the streak of light.
"Your husband?" he inquired, with the tone of a
man accustomed to unlawful trysts. "Fine voice
for a ship's deck in a thundering squall."

"No; my father. I am not married."

"You seem a fine girl, Miss Bessie, dear," he said
at once.

She turned her face away.

"Oh, I say,--what's up? Who's murdering
him?"

"He wants his tea." She faced him, still and
tall, with averted head, with her hands hanging
clasped before her.

"Hadn't you better go in?" he suggested, after
watching for a while the nape of her neck, a patch
of dazzling white skin and soft shadow above the
sombre line of her shoulders. Her wrap had slipped
down to her elbows. "You'll have all the town
coming out presently. I'll wait here a bit."

Her wrap fell to the ground, and he stooped to
pick it up; she had vanished. He threw it over
his arm, and approaching the window squarely he
saw a monstrous form of a fat man in an arm-
chair, an unshaded lamp, the yawning of an enor-
mous mouth in a big flat face encircled by a ragged
halo of hair--Miss Bessie's head and bust. The
shouting stopped; the blind ran down. He lost
himself in thinking how awkward it was. Father
mad; no getting into the house. No money to get
back; a hungry chum in London who would begin
to think he had been given the go-by. "Damn!"
he muttered. He could break the door in, cer-
tainly; but they would perhaps bundle him into
chokey for that without asking questions--no great
matter, only he was confoundedly afraid of being
locked up, even in mistake. He turned cold at the
thought. He stamped his feet on the sod-
den grass.

"What are you?--a sailor?" said an agitated
voice.

She had flitted out, a shadow herself, attracted
by the reckless shadow waiting under the wall of
her home.

"Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth
my salt before the mast. Came home that way this
time."

"Where do you come from?" she asked.

"Right away from a jolly good spree," he said,