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Updated: June 10, 2025
By various little symptoms the landlady knew that her lodger was getting hard up. Yet no amount of badgering and argument would induce Cuckoo to say why she sat indoors at night. She acknowledged that she was not ill. Mrs. Brigg had been seriously exercised. But now her old heart was glad. Cuckoo was, perhaps, mounting into higher circles, circles in which hats were not worn during the evening.
Brigg, who suddenly shrunk away muttering: "I'll get something; breakfast I'll get it." Julian looked dazed. He was only recovering gradually from his drunken stupor. "Starving starving," he repeated, vacantly staring at Cuckoo, who said nothing more, only lay back, trying to understand things, and to emerge from the mists and noises in which she still seemed to be floating. Presently Mrs.
She shuffled after Cuckoo into the bedroom. "Eh? What is it?" she ejaculated. "What are you a-doing of?" "Going," Cuckoo threw at her. "Now?" "Yes." "Where to?" No answer. Cuckoo was thrusting the few things still left to her into the only box she now possessed in the world. Mrs. Brigg stood in the folding doorway watching, and making mouths, as is the fashion of the elderly when emotional.
Her grey head hove in sight. "Where are you going? Piccadilly?" "No; get the whistle." "What and no hat!" She was evidently impressed. "A toff is it?" she ejaculated, obviously appeased. "Well! so long as I get the rent I " With a white glare Cuckoo seized the whistle from her claw, and in a moment was driving away through the snow. Mrs. Brigg trotted back to the kitchen decidedly relieved.
Brigg go by, and then steps sounding in the passage. Then there came to her ears a quiet voice with a very characteristic note of bright calmness in it. Standing in her frilled nightdress among the bits of glass, Cuckoo flushed scarlet all over her face and neck. She knew who the visitor was. With one dart she reached the washhand-stand.
And the sweet Brigg dream that had dawned on the last night of the old year, dream of a rich "toff" in love with Cuckoo and winding her up to gilded circles, in which the fall of night set gay ladies bareheaded, and scattered all feathered hats to limbo, died childless and leaving no legacies.
He said he would stay, speaking in the voice of a man drugged almost into uncertainty of his surroundings. Down in her dreary kitchen, among her dingy pots and pans, Mrs. Brigg was filled with an anger that seemed to her as righteous as the anger of a Puritan against Museum-opening on Sunday. Her ground-floor lodger was going to the bad.
"I'm all right," said Cuckoo crossly. "Leave me alone, do." She turned into her sitting-room. Mrs. Brigg followed, open-mouthed. "Ain't you a-goin' out ag'in?" "No; oh do leave off starin'. What's the matter with you?" Mrs. Brigg heaved a thick sigh and shuffled round upon her heels, which made a noise upon the oilcloth like the boots of the comic man at a music-hall.
On the whole, prudence dictated a day or two's patience, just a day or two, or a week's, not more, not a moment more. Thus it came about that Cuckoo had now been another week beneath the roof of Mrs. Brigg without paying hard cash for the asylum. The previous evening the landlady had burst out again into fury, refusing to get in any more food for Cuckoo, and demanding the fortnight's rent.
Brigg did not resent the action, but fell against the passage wall sobbing and murmuring, "My precious, my chickabiddy!" while Cuckoo banged the hall door and went out into the night. Then the landlady, moved by a sacred impulse of pardon, bolted down to her kitchen and began to rummage enthusiastically in her larder.
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