She was thankful for his solution of her money difficulties, for pride would not have allowed her to face the butcher and the grocer without the money in her hand. In spite of the loss that it implied, she couldn’t reasonably refuse to be glad that he had abandoned football since she had so often begged him to do so. What troubled her far more than this was the fact that his attitude toward her was changed. It was clear that he had not been too drunk to realise the significance of the moment when he had held her in his arms and they had looked into each other’s eyes. He had seen the emotional precipice on the edge of which they were standing. Well, so had she; but that seemed to her no reason why they should not pretend that things were as they had always been. She was content to play her part; even, for their common comfort, to forget what had happened. The only thing that she could not bear was that he should avoid her as though she were an evil thing to be feared and distrusted. This, in effect, was what he did. To drink habitually was not in his nature. When he drank he did so simply as a means to escape from himself or from some harassing emotion; and so he did not seek a refuge, as she had feared he would, in a public house. None the less it soon became clear that the pleasant homely evenings at Hackett’s Cottages were now at an end. The chair which Alice always arranged for him at the fireside was never occupied. When he came home from the pit at night and had washed himself in the scullery he now went out again to spend the evenings with his friends, with old Mr Higgins, with George Harper, or with Mrs Moseley. He hated his work at the colliery: the dark, cramped labour in remote subterranean stalls was a terrible change from his free and easy life at the furnaces. He hated the dirt no less than the darkness and it scarcely mended matters to realise that he was wanted at the pit. Opportunities of escape soon presented themselves. The retirement of their most promising player from the United team created a sensation not only in Mawne but in the surrounding towns. Abner would give no explanation for it. When people asked him why he was not playing for Mawne he merely told them to go and ask Hudson. It was impossible for him to change his team in the middle of the season without an official transfer. The secretary of the Albion made a special journey to Halesby to ask him to consent to this; but since this proceeding would have presented the Mawne club with a handsome transfer fee, he refused. The Albion offered him good and easy work in North Bromwich if he would sign on for them next season. ‘You can have it for the asking,’ they said—but he refused, for though he would have liked nothing better he felt that it would be wrong to desert Alice in her present emergency. Until his father returned it was his duty to stay with her.