iv

She did not tell Toby the next night about her singing. She rather carefully refrained from telling him, not out of considerateness, but from a sort of scorn for his jealousy. To herself she said "Anything for a quiet life." Toby never dreamed that such a person as Gaga existed, any more than he guessed at any of Sally's encounters with young men on the way home. Sally had discretion. Had he been a lover, she might have told him; but as he was more to her than that she saw no reason to arouse his jealousy. And really, if a man spoke to her, and looked all right, where was the harm in letting him walk a little way with her? She never made appointments, and after a time, when they found she could take care of herself, and did not want a non-committed male friend, these fellow-pedestrians soon left her alone. For Sally, each of them was practice. To mention them to Toby would have been to give them all too great importance. And he might have made a fuss, and unnecessarily interrupted her fun. "Where ignorance is bliss," thought Sally, "'tis folly to call out the guard." And, further, "Let sleeping dogs lie until the milk is stolen." And so Toby pursued his own path, and never knew a tenth of what went on in Sally's life and mind. Compared with Sally, he knew nothing at all. She grew each day more rusée, more cunning in knowledge of the world. And Toby blundered where he should have been most astute. It was his fate.

Sally told him about the outing, because she saw he was in a gloomy mood on the day—a Sunday—after the girls' treat. She described it at length as they walked in Waterlow Park, hanging on to his arm, and all the time searching his tell-tale face and guessing at the cause of his manifest depression. She told about the picnic and the woods, and the tea, and the journey home; and she saw his mouth slightly open as he grunted. She could see the tiny points of hair that were beginning to make a perceptible blueness upon his chin, and the moulding of his cheek, and a little patch of fine down upon his cheek bone, and the hair at his temples which she had so often kissed. And she knew by his averted eye that something was the matter with him. She began to try drawing him on the subject—his aunt, had he heard from his mother (who had married again when Toby was a baby, and lived with her husband in the North), what had he been doing at the Works? Ah! That was it. Toby had started, and frowned. It was something at the Works. Oh, he was easy for Sally to read!

"What's the matter?" she suddenly asked. Toby flushed and scowled down at her, very dark and ugly in his irritation, his mouth twisted.

"Matter?" he demanded. "What d'you mean? Nothing's the matter."

"That's why you're so cheerful, I suppose," retorted Sally—"At the Works, I mean." Toby gave her a quick, angry look in which there was an admixture of fear and suspicion.

"There's nothing the matter," he said, in a tyrannic voice.

"Have you got the sack?" Sally was merciless. She replied to his tyrannic voice with one as hard and stabbing as a gimlet. "Ah, I thought that was it. What you been doing?"

"Nothing," said Toby. "And anyway, what's it to do with you?"

"Well, I'm out walking with you. See? And I got to do all the talking. See? And if you're going to be surly I'll go home by myself. That's what it's got to do with me. And, besides, it is something to do with me, and don't you forget it. You got no right to keep things from me."

Toby was cowed by her handling of him. He might be strong, but brains are always more potent than muscle in such circumstances. And men are always afraid of the women they love.

"Yes, I got the push," he defiantly said.

"And what's that for?" demanded Sally, with the severity of a mother to her baby. There was no answer. "What's that for?" she repeated. "Come on, Toby, you'll feel better if you tell me about it. Toby, d'you love me? Well, there's nobody about ... quick!" They kissed, and her arms had been round his neck, and Toby was her sheepish, scowling, smiling slave. Sally had a faint consciousness of joy in her power.

"Well, you see...." he began, haltingly. "Jackson and I ... we been ... well, we wanted to make a bit, you see. And—tiddent his fault, but he...."

"Been pinching stuff," said Sally. "Clumsy. Got found out. Well?"

"Well, they found out about me, too."

"What had you been doing?"

"I never took anything; but I found a lot of old things among the rubbish, and I showed them to Jackson. Well, they asked him if anybody had been with him; and he said 'no.'"

"That was all right," Sally said. "I like Jackson."

"But then the man he'd been dealing with said Jackson had talked about his 'mate.' And they knew that was me. And I ... told 'em a tale."

"I bet!" cried Sally, scornfully. "And got caught in it, too. Badly!"

"Well, they fired us both yesterday, and said we was lucky they didn't prosecute."

"Did they pay you? What you going to do now?"

"I dunno." Toby stared stubbornly before him. "Get something else, I suppose. Jackson's going for a sailor. Guess I'll do that, too."

"Go for a sailor?" demanded Sally, with a heart that went dump into her boots. "What d'you want to do that for?"

"I'd be with Jackson, see, if I went for a sailor."

"And what about me?" Sally's voice was no longer hard or dry. "D'you want to leave me? Are you tired of me, Toby? I believe you are. Are you?"

"No, I'm not. And I don't want to leave you. But if I went for a sailor I'd make a bit of money, perhaps, and then after a little while I could come back and begin again. It would get over having no reference. They'd say 'Where you been working?' and I'd say 'Been at sea for the last year.' Then they wouldn't know anything but what I told 'em. I wouldn't go long voyages, Sally. Only just short ones. I'd often come home, and we'd have a spree."

Sally's quick brain was at work. She did not want him to go; but if he went, and if she saw him often, in spite of his being away, perhaps it would not be so bad.

"But suppose you got wrecked?" she exclaimed.

"Rot. D'you suppose every ship gets wrecked? Don't be a fool!"

"No. But yours might get wrecked. How am I to know, supposing there's a storm? It won't not get wrecked because you're on it. Would you come home very often? Would you wear sailor clothes? Wonder how you'd look! Oh, I know—you mean a jersey. Would it have letters across your chest? Where d'you have to go?"

Sally was so interested that she was even making up Toby's mind for him. By the time they went in it was decided that he and Jackson were going to sea, and that Sally should be taken down to visit his ship if it happened to be at the Docks or at Tilbury. She had dancing visions of Toby in a navy blue jersey, with "Queen of the Earth" or "La Marguerite" or "Juanita" across it in white letters. She could see his dark hair blown by the wind, and the veins in his wrists standing out as he hauled a rope. It was rather fun! she thought. "My boy's a sailor." She would be able to touch him for luck. Sailors were lucky. She sang to herself a song one of the workgirls knew:

"Sailors are lads. Sailors are lads.

Sailors they make you laugh!"

Before night she was wholly reconciled to the idea that Toby would go to sea. She soon had a dim perception of the fact that it would do him good to go. It would get him away from the atmosphere of the Works, where there seemed to be a lot of stupid larking and work-dodging. Now that he was dismissed she began to realise all this. She was glad he was away from it. She was glad he was going to sea. It would be a complete change. It would do him good. He had been fiddling about too long at the Works, in his overalls and in the grime and oil and general dodginess of the place. The ship would take him about, and show him the way people did things. It would open his eyes and his brains. Electrically, something self-protective within her added the further message: it would keep him out of the way for a time. Sally breathed deeply. An unreadable smile was upon her lips, and no smile at all was in her eyes. Afar off she scented change; but what manner of change she did not as yet recognise. It was her instinct at work, her instinct for turning life to her own advantage. It was an infallible instinct, like that of birds for a coming storm.