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?"