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.”Introduce myself“Then if you`ll excuse the liberty, I`ll introduce myself, 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.“Come to see my wife,” the man repeated. “So now we can talk it over—as man to man.”Simmons slowly shut his mouth, and led the way upstairs mechanically, his fingers still in his hair. A sense of the state of affairs sunk gradually into his brain, and the small devil woke again. Suppose this man was Ford? Suppose he did claim his wife? Would it be a knockdown blow? Would it hit him out?—or not? He thought of the troupers, the tea-things, the mangling, the knives, the kettles and the windows; and he thought of them in the way of a backslider.
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