’orseroad an’ I b’lieve I’d be thought better of if I laid in bed all day like some would, that I do.” So that Thomas Simmons avoided the subject, nor even murmured when she resolved to cut his hair.

So his placid fortune endured for years. Then there came a golden summer evening when Mrs. Simmons betook herself with a basket to do some small shopping, and Simmons was left at home. He washed and put away the tea-things, and then he fell to meditating on a new pair of trousers, finished that day and hanging behind the parlor door. There they hung, in all their decent innocence of shape in the seat, and they were shorter of leg, longer of waist, and wilder of pattern than he had ever worn before. And as he looked on them the small devil of original sin awoke and clamored in his breast. He was ashamed of it, of course, for well he knew the gratitude he owed his wife for those same trousers, among other blessings. Still, there the small devil was, and the small devil was fertile in base suggestions, and could not be kept from hinting at the new crop of workshop gibes that would spring at Tommy’s first public appearance in such things.

“Pitch ’em in the dust-bin!” said the small devil, at last; “it’s all they’re fit for.”

Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a moment thought of washing the tea- things over again by way of discipline. Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing that the front door was standing open, probably by the fault of the child downstairs. Now, a front door standing open was a thing that Mrs. Simmons would not abide; it looked low. So Simmons went down, that she might not be wroth with him for the thing when she came back; and, as he shut the door, he looked forth into the street.

A man was loitering on the pavement, and prying curiously about the door. His face was tanned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his unbraced blue trousers, and well back on his head he wore the high-crowned peaked cap topped with a knob of wool, which is affected by Jack ashore about the docks. He lurched a step nearer to the door, and: “Mrs. Ford ain’t in, is she?” he said.

Simmons stared at him for a matter of five seconds, and then said: “Eh?”

“Mrs. Ford as was, then—Simmons now, ain’t it?”

He said this with a furtive leer that Simmons neither liked nor understood.

“No,” said Simmons, “she ain’t in now.”

“You ain’t her ’usband, are ye?”

“Yus.”

The man took his pipe from his mouth, and grinned silently and long. “Blimy,” he said, at length, “you look the sort o’ bloke she’d like.” And with that he grinned again. Then, seeing that Simmons made ready to shut the door, he put a foot on the sill and a hand against the panel. “Don’t be in a ’urry, matey,” he said; “I come ’ere t’ave a little talk with you, man to man, d’ye see?” And he frowned fiercely.

Tommy Simmons felt uncomfortable, but the door would not shut, so he parleyed. “Wotjer want?” he asked. “I dunno you.”

“Then if you’ll excuse the liberty, I’ll interdooce meself, in a manner of speaking.” He touched his cap with a bob of mock humility. “I’m Bob Ford,” he said, “come back out o’ kingdom-come, so to say. Me as went down with the ‘Mooltan’—safe dead five years gone. I come to see my wife.”

During this speech Thomas Simmons’s jaw was dropping lower and lower. At the end of it he poked his fingers up through his hair, looked down at the mat, then up at the fanlight, then out into the street, then hard at his visitor. But he found nothing to say.