He had his attractions even for Fanny. What she rebelled against so bitterly was that he had no sort of ambition. He was a moulder, but of very commonplace skill. He was thirty-two years old, and hadn’t saved twenty pounds. She would have to provide the money for the home. He didn’t care. He just didn’t care. He had no initiative at all. He had no vices—no obvious ones. But he was just indifferent, spending as he went, and not caring. Yet he did not look happy. She remembered his face in the fire-glow: something haunted, abstracted about it. As he sat there eating his pork pie, bulging his cheek out, she felt he was like a doom to her. And she raged against the doom of him. It wasn’t that he was gross. His way was common, almost on purpose. But he himself wasn’t really common. For instance, his food was not particularly important to him, he was not greedy. He had a charm, too, particularly for women, with his blondness and his sensitiveness and his way of making a woman feel that she was a higher being. But Fanny knew him, knew the peculiar obstinate limitedness of him, that would nearly send her mad. He stayed till about half past nine. She went to the door with him. “When are you coming up?” he said, jerking his head in the direction, presumably, of his own home. “I’ll come tomorrow afternoon,” she said brightly. Between Fanny and Mrs. Goodall, his mother, there was naturally no love lost. Again she gave him an awkward little kiss, and said good-night. “You can’t wonder, you know, child, if he doesn’t seem so very keen,” said her aunt. “It’s your own fault.” “Oh, Aunt, I couldn’t stand him when he was keen. I can do with him a lot better as he is.” The two women sat and talked far into the night. They understood each other. The aunt, too, had married as Fanny was marrying: a man who was no companion to her, a violent man, brother of Fanny’s father. He was dead, Fanny’s father was dead. Poor Aunt Lizzie, she cried woefully over her bright niece, when she had gone to bed. Fanny paid the promised visit to his people the next afternoon. Mrs. Goodall was a large woman with smooth-parted hair, a common, obstinate woman, who had spoiled her four lads and her one vixen of a married daughter. She was one of those old-fashioned powerful natures that couldn’t do with looks or education or any form of showing off. She fairly hated the sound of correct English. She _thee’d_ and _tha’d_ her prospective daughter-in-law, and said: “I’m none as ormin’ as I look, seest ta.” Fanny did not think her prospective mother-in-law looked at all orming, so the speech was unnecessary.