"Of course you'd be down on him; quite right; so was Jeff. Jeff didn't half give him a talking to, I can tell you! 'Oh, I'll give him a dressing down,' he said; he was pretending it wasn't much, so as not to alarm me; but _I_ know him! 'Miss Causton and me?' he said. 'What a ridiculous idea!' And he made Archie apologise before the whole school. And now Archie's gone, and they said it was suicide; but what I can't understand is about Jeff's having that black eye, that very day. He'd fallen when he was drunk, he said, but Jeff never got drunk. He said he tripped on the step; but he never _got_ drunk, if you understand what I mean. Wine is a mocker, isn't it, Louie? But I'm sure Jeff wasn't drunk. He isn't that kind of man." Louie herself wondered why she should interpose as quickly and peremptorily as she did. She wondered, too, why she should do so in the words she used and in a voice so thin and harsh. "Oh--of _course_ he was drunk! My father keeps a public-house, so I ought to know. And they often get black eyes when they're drunk. Let's talk about something else." "Well," said Kitty, with her head on one side, "a public-house is as paying a business as there is, especially in a poor neighbourhood. But I'd rather have my little bit in tramways. People ought to be careful how they invest their money; dividends aren't everything; what shall it profit a man? So you think I needn't worry about Jeff's black eye?" All at once Louie felt an almost hysterical need to turn Kitty's weak wanderings into another direction--any other direction. Glibly she began to improvise. "It's horrid," she said, her voice a little raised. "I've seen them at my father's. They get drunk, and fall, and then they get black eyes quite easily. And," she ran on regardlessly, "they knock themselves about fearfully! I saw a man in the Harrow Road one night----" Feverishly she extemporised. To something she had once seen from the top of a bus she gave colour and circumstance. Kitty was impressed. "Dear me!" she said. Then, when the danger, whatever it was, seemed to be averted, Louie turned, though not much more calmly, to Margate. Kitty was perfectly docile; Margate or that dangerous other were all the same to her. Louie had never been to Margate, but she compared Margate with other places--Bournemouth, Ilfracombe, Scarboro. "I should like to go to Scarboro," Kitty mused--"Harrogate too--Harrogate's tremendously toney, isn't it?" "Very; all hotels and kursaals and pump rooms and things," averred Louie, who had never been to Harrogate either. Then, ten minutes later, she rose. She said good-bye. But even as she did so she received another start. Kitty had suddenly called in a sharp, loud voice. "Was that Annie at the door?" "No," said Louie, her nerves all on edge. "There's nobody." "Open the door and look!" Louie did so. There was nobody. She returned to the bed again. Kitty was once more squatting up. She still spoke sharply.