ve me a
turn, I can tell you; I thought some of the chaps would see her. I
simply went cold all over. But they were on ahead and hadn't noticed
her.'

'Thank God for that!' said Mrs Griffith, piously.

'Well, what d'you think I did? I went straight up to her and looked her
full in the face. But d'you think she moved a muscle? She simply looked
at me as if she'd never set eyes on me before. Well, I was taken aback,
I can tell you. I thought she'd faint. Not a bit of it.'

'No, I know Daisy,' said Mrs Griffith; 'you think she's this and that,
because she looks at you with those blue eyes of hers, as if she
couldn't say bo to a goose, but she's got the very devil inside her....
Well, I shall tell her father that, just so as to let him see what she
has come to.'...

* * * * *

The existence of the Griffith household went on calmly. Husband and wife
and son led their life in the dull little fishing town, the seasons
passed insensibly into one another, one year slid gradually into the
next; and the five years that went by seemed like one long, long day.
Mrs Griffith did not alter an atom; she performed her housework, went to
church regularly, and behaved like a Christian woman in that state of
life in which a merciful Providence had been pleased to put her. George
got married, and on Sunday afternoons could be seen wheeling an infant
in a perambulator along the street. He was a good husband and an
excellent father. He never drank too much, he worked well, he was
careful of his earnings, and he also went to church regularly; his
ambition was to become churchwarden after his father. And even in Mr
Griffith there was not so very much change. He was more bowed, his hair
and beard were greyer. His face was set in an expression of passive
misery, and he was extremely silent. But as Mrs Griffith said,--

'Of course, he's getting old. One can't expect to remain young for
ever'--she was a woman who frequently said profound things--'and I've
known all along he wasn't the sort of man to make old bones. He's never
had the go in him that I have. Why, I'd make two of him.'

The Griffiths were not so well-to-do as before. As Blackstable became a
more important health resort, a regular undertaker opened a shop there;
and his window, with two little model coffins and an arrangement of
black Prince of Wales's feathers surrounded by a white wreath, took the
fancy of the natives, so that Mr Griffith almost