Then she would be married--she, Eveline. People

would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her

mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she

sometimes felt herself in danger of her father's violence. She knew

it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were

growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry

and Ernest, because she was a girl but latterly he had begun to

threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead

mother's sake. And no she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was

dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was

nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the

invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to

weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages--seven

shillings--and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble

was to get any money from her father. He said she used to

squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn't going to

give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and

much more, for he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night. In the

end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention

of buying Sunday's dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as

she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse

tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and

returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard

work to keep the house together and to see that the two young

children who had been left to hr charge went to school regularly

and got their meals regularly. It was hard work--a hard life--but

now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly

undesirable life.


She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very

kind, manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the

night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres

where he had a home waiting for her. How well she remembered

the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the

main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He

was standing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head

and his hair tumbled forward over a face of bronze. Then they had

come to know each other. He used to meet her outside the Stores

every evening and see her home. He took her to see The Bohemian

Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part of the

theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little.

People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the

lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He

used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an

excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like

him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy

at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to

Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the

names of the different services. He had sailed through the Straits

of Magellan and he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians.