yourself on the sofa in the face of the painfully-evident disapproval of the landlady.
You have been here, say, three months, and are only about two weeks behind. The landlady still says, 'Good morning, Mr. Careless,' or 'Good evening, Mr. Careless,' but there is an unpleasant accent on the 'Mr.' and a still more unpleasantly pronounced stress on the 'morning' or 'evening.' While your money lasted you paid up well and regularly―sometimes in advance―and dined out most of the time; but that doesn't count now.
Ten minutes pass, and then the landlady's disapproval becomes manifest and aggressive. One of the little girls, a sharp-faced little larrikiness, who always wears a furtive grin of cunning―it seems as though it were born with her, and is perhaps more a misfortune than a fault―comes in and says please she wants to tidy up.
So you get up and take your hat and go out again to look for a place to rest in―to try not to think.
You wish you could get away up country. You also wish you were dead.
The landlady, Mrs. Jones, is a widow, or grass-widow, Welsh, of course, and clannish; flat face, watery grey eyes, shallow, selfish, ignorant, and a hypocrite unconsciously―by instinct.
But the worst of it is that Mrs. Jones takes advantage of the situation to corner you in the passage when you want to get out, or when you come in tired, and talk. It amounts to about this: She has
