第46章

And then Mrs.Bunting's mind - her poor, weak, tired mind - wandered off to young Chandler.A funny thing love was, when you came to think of it - which she, Ellen Bunting, didn't often do.There was Joe, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of young women, and pretty young women, too, - quite as pretty as Daisy, and ten times more artful - and yet there! He passed them all by, had done so ever since last summer, though you might be sure that they, artful minxes, by no manner of means passed him by, - without giving them a thought!

As Daisy wasn't here, he would probably keep away to-day.There was comfort in that thought, too.

And then Mrs.Bunting sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful turgid flood.If Joe did come in, she must nerve herself to hear all that - that talk there'd be about The Avenger between him and Bunting.

Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling exactly as if she had just recovered from an illness which had left her very weak, very, very tired in body and soul.

She stood for a moment listening - listening, and shivering, for it was very cold.Considering how early it still was, there seemed a lot of coming and going in the Marylebone Road.She could hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and the tightly fastened windows of the sitting-room.There must be a regular crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene of The Avenger's last extraordinary crime.

She heard the sudden thud made by their usual morning paper falling from the letter-box on to the floor of the hall, and a moment later came the sound of Bunting quickly, quietly going out and getting it.

She visualised him coming back, and sitting down with a sigh of satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.

Languidly she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant tramping and of noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume and in sound as the moments slipped by.

******

When Mrs.Bunting went down into her kitchen everything looked just as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she had expected to find there.Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed room was full of fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had been widely opened to the air.She had left them shut.

Making a "spill" out of a twist of newspaper - she had been taught the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses - she stooped and flung open the oven-door of her gas-stove.Yes, it was as she had expected a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last used the oven, and through to the stone floor below had fallen a mass of black, gluey soot.

Mrs.Bunting took the ham and eggs that she had bought the previous day for her own and Bunting's breakfast upstairs, and broiled them over the gas-ring in their sitting-room.Her husband watched her in surprised silence.She had never done such a thing before.

"I couldn't stay down there," she said; "it was so cold and foggy.

I thought I'd make breakfast up here, just for to-day.""Yes," he said kindly; "that's quite right, Ellen.I think you've done quite right, my dear."But, when it came to the point, his wife could not eat any of the nice breakfast she had got ready; she only had another cup of tea.

"I'm afraid you're ill, Ellen?" Bunting asked solicitously.

"No," she said shortly; "I'm not ill at all.Don't be silly! The thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me, and put me off my food.Just hark to them now!"Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet and loud, ribald laughter.What a crowd; nay, what a mob, must be hastening busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing to be seen!

Mrs.Bunting made her husband lock the front gate."I don't want any of those ghouls in here!" she exclaimed angrily.And then, "What a lot of idle people there are in the world!" she said.