Self-absorbed, both went mechanically on with the unappetising meal. Upstairs Toby walked once more into his own room; and then came running heavily down the stairs and past their door and then right down to the street. Sally's heart was in a flutter, and her eyes flew once again to the clock. It was so early for Toby to be going out. She would not see him, then. She would not see him, and all her excitement was gone like an exploded toy balloon. The heart was taken out of her enterprise. He was going out: he did not want her: he was finished with her. Sally could not repress the single sob that rose to her lips. "... so I asked Mr. Flack if they'd ever kep' it, and he said no, they never had, and told me to try at Boots's, down by the Nag's Head...." "Oh, _mother_," cried Sally, beside herself. "Do shut up about your head. It gives me the hump." Then, as she became aware of what she had said, she defensively proceeded. "Well, you keep on talking about it, and it doesn't do any _good_ to talk about it. If you want to know, I'm ill myself. I've got a headache, and I've got the rats...." "You got no call to speak to your mother that way," said Mrs. Minto. "If I'd a spoke to _my_ mother like that, I should have got the strap. So mind that, Sally. It's not nice. I've noticed you getting very unmannerly and out of hand lately. Very rude. I don't know what to do with you, you're so rude. It's not right, and it worries me so that I can't think what I'm doing. I was talking about it the other day to Mrs. Roberson, and _she_ says...." "Yes, ma," said Sally, rising, and going to the door to take her hat down from the peg. "She seems to have got a lot to say. Doesn't seem to be much sense in what she says." "Now, you're not to...." By this time Sally had one sleeve on and was feeling for the other. In a glance at her little peaked determined face, and obstinate mouth, Mrs. Minto's spirit suddenly failed. Where she had meant to be maternally peremptory she became querulous. "Wherever you going now?" she asked weakly. "Oh, you _are_ a naughty wilful girl." "Out," said Sally, bluntly. Unheeding the outcry that followed, she was out of the door and down the stairs before her mother could check her; and with a new ugly sense of revolt was on her way to see Mrs. Perce in a mood of reckless despair. Left alone, Mrs. Minto washed feebly up, and sighingly dried the cups and plates and rearranged them in the cupboard. Presently she sat in a limp curve over the fire, in a kind of stupor, dreaming of she knew not what. Every now and then she would give a jerk in anger at Sally's rudeness and recently uncontrollable highhandedness, which recurred to her attention whenever her thoughts touched reality. For the rest she sat motionless, until the coal-blocks subsided and the fire went black. x