“Blind as a leg of mutton,” said Mrs. Murdoch, and still there lingered in her accents a trace of pride. Then suddenly her demeanor changed and there crept over her countenance what Michael was bound to believe to be an expression of coyness. “Don’t say anything more to Alf about the Horseshoe. You see, I only gave you the idea I was meeting him, because I didn’t really know you very well at the time. Of course really I’d gone to see my sister. No, without a joke, I was spending the evening with a gentleman friend.” Michael looked at her in astonishment. “My old man wouldn’t half knock me about, if he had the least suspicion. But it’s someone I knew before I was married, and that makes a difference, doesn’t it?” “Does your husband go out with lady friends he knew before he was married?” Michael asked, and wondered if Mrs. Murdoch would see an implied reproof. “What?” she shrilled. “I’d like to catch him nosing after another woman. He wouldn’t see a hundred elephants before I’d done with him. I’d show him.” “But why should you have freedom and not he?” Michael asked. “Never mind about him. You let him try. You see what he’d get.” Michael did not think the argument could be carried on very profitably. So he showed signs of wanting to return to his book, and Mrs. Murdoch retired. What extraordinary standards she had, and how bitterly she was prepared to defend a convention, for after all in such a marriage the infidelity of the husband was nothing but a conventional offense: she obviously had no affection for him. The point of view became very topsyturvy in Neptune Crescent, Michael decided.