Her mother promptly boxed her ears. “Elsie Palmer, you’re nothing but a liar, and you’ll break your widowed mother’s heart and bring her to disgrace before you’re done. However you’ve managed to grow up what you are, so particular as I’ve been with the two of you, is more than I can understand. Tell me this directly minute, who you were with last night?” Elsie maintained a sullen silence, dodging as her mother aimed another heavy blow at her. “I declare you’ll make me lose my temper with you!” said Mrs. Palmer violently. “Answer me this instant.” “I went to the cinema.” “Who took you?” “That fellow in the office--that Leary boy.” “Why couldn’t you come in last night and say where you’d been, then? The fact is, Elsie, you’re telling me a pack of lies, and I know it perfectly well. You can’t take your mother in, let me tell you, whatever you may think, I’m sure _I_ don’t know what to do with you. I sometimes think you’d better go and live with your aunties; you’d find Aunt Gertie strict enough, I can tell you.” Elsie knew this to be true, and was fiercely resolved never to put it to the test. “What you want is a thorough good whipping,” said Mrs. Palmer, already absent-minded and preoccupied with preparations for breakfast. “Put that kettle on, Elsie, and be quick about it. And I give you fair warning that the very next time I have to speak to you like this--(see if that’s the girl at the door--it ought to be, by this time)--the very next time, I’ll make you remember it in a way you won’t enjoy, my lady.” Mrs. Palmer’s active display of wrath was over, and Elsie knew that she had nothing to do but to keep out of her mother’s way for the next few days. She helped to get the breakfast ready in silence. She was too much used to similar scenes to feel very much upset by this one; nevertheless it influenced her in favour of acting upon Irene Tidmarsh’s advice. She knew very well that it would not be as easy to hoodwink Mrs. Palmer over a week-end spent out of London as she had pretended to Mr. Williams. Elsie was still afraid of her mother, and believed that she might quite well carry out her threat of sending her daughter to live with the two aunts. Her chief pang was at relinquishing the thought of the pink silk underclothes, but she endeavoured to persuade herself that they might still be hers, when she should be on the point of marrying Mr. Williams. After all, it would be more satisfactory to own them on those terms than to be obliged to put them away after two days into hiding, in some place--and Elsie wondered ruefully what place--where they should not be spied out by Geraldine. She went to the office as usual and was a good deal disconcerted when Fred Leary announced that “the Old Man” had telephoned to say that he was called away on business, and should not be back for two days. Elsie, rather afraid that her own determination might weaken, decided to write to him, sending the letter to his home address.