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Messrs. Rose and Thorn, High Street, Kensington." Ringing the bell, she thought: 'It will be a job for Mrs. Hughs, poor thing. I believe she'll do it quite as well as Rose and Thorn. "Would you please ask Mrs. Hughs to come to me? Oh, is that you, Mrs. Hughs? Come in."
Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer. Her little son's thin voice rose instead: "Baby's dead. We buried him in the ground. I saw it. Mr. Creed came in the cab with me." White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-like, the little family marched on....
"Well, this business that you call a 'plant' is more like that. I don't want to alarm you, but I think you as well as our young friend Martin, are inclined to underrate the emotional capacity of human nature." Disquietude broke up the customary mask on Stephen's face: "I don't understand," he stammered. "Well, we're none of us machines, not even amateurs like me not even under-dogs like Hughs.
Was she thinking of that; of her lost youth and comeliness, and her man's dead love; of the long descent to shadowland; of the other children she had buried; of Hughs in prison; of the girl that had "put a spell on him"; or only of the last precious tugs the tiny lips at rest in the first four-wheeled cab had given at her breast?
She had only told Hughs how that young girl had gone, and left a week's rent, with a bit of writing to say she wasn't coming back; it wasn't her fault that she was gone that ought never to have come there at all, a creature that knew no better than to come between husband and wife. She couldn't tell no more than he could where that young girl had gone!
The stage did not exceed six miles east; but I did not venture to proceed farther until I had examined the country in advance, which did not look very promising. I named this creek "Hughs's Creek," after Hughs, Esq., of Darling Downs.
She passed across the opening of the by-street, still walking in the slack way of one who takes the pleasures of the streets. She passed from view; Hilary strained his eyes to see if Hughs were following. He waited several minutes. The man did not appear. The chase was over! And suddenly it flashed across him that Hughs had merely dogged her to see that she had no assignation with anybody.
Hughs so strange a mingling of fear, commiseration, loyalty, shame, and trembling curiosity at the new factor which had come into the life of all this little family walking giraffe-like back to Kensington that to have gone beyond them would have been like plunging into a wintry river.
Hughs would be released to-morrow; the little model would not stop her visits unless forced to; Mr. Stone could not well do without her; Bianca had in effect declared that she was being driven out of her own house. It was this situation which Hilary, seated beneath the bust of Socrates, turned over and over in his mind.
In the air there was the scent of him, of walls, and washing, and red herrings. The two young people took their seat on the window-sill. "May we open the window, Mrs. Hughs?" said Thyme. "Or will it hurt the baby?" "No, miss." "What's the matter with your wrists?" asked Martin. The seamstress, muffing her arms with the garment she was dipping in soapy water, did not answer. "Don't do that.
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