on't you punch into _him,_ Alf?" Poppy screamed.

Still that wobbling eye, blank and ferocious, was fixed upon vacancy.

"Let _me_ look after Mrs. Murdoch I _don't_ think!" shouted Poppy. "And
be a man, even if you can't keep your old woman out of the lodger's
room. ---- ----! I wouldn't half slosh his jaw in, if I was a man,
the ---- ----!"

It was a question for Michael either of laughing outright or of being
nauseated at the oaths streaming from that little woman's thin magenta
lips. He laughed. Even with her paint, she still looked so respectable.
When he began to laugh, he laughed so uncontrollably that he had to hold
on to the rail of the balusters until they rattled like ribs.

Michael's laughter stung the group to frenzied action. Mrs. Murdoch spat
in her husband's face, whereupon he immediately loosed his grip upon her
shoulders. In a moment she and Poppy were clawing each other. Michael,
though he was still laughing unquenchably, rushed downstairs to part
them. He had an idea that both of the women instantly turned and
attacked him. The hat-stand fell over: the scurfy front-door mat slid up
and down the oil cloth: there was a reek of stale scent and dust and
spirituous breath.

At last Michael managed to secure Poppy's thin twitching arms and to
hold her fast, though she was kicking him with sharp-heeled boots and he
was weak with inward laughter. Mrs. Murdoch in the lull began fecklessly
to gather together the strands of her disordered hair. Alf, who had gone
to peep from the window of the ground-floor front in case a policeman's
bull's-eye were glancing on Neptune Crescent, reappeared in the doorway.

"What a smell of gas!" he exclaimed nervously.

There was indeed a smell of gas, and Michael remembered that Poppy in
her struggle had grasped the bracket. She must have dislocated the lead
pipe rather badly, for the light was already dimming and the gas was
rushing out fast. The tumultuous scene was allayed. Mr. Murdoch hurried
to cut off the main. Poppy retired into her room, slammed and locked the
door. Michael went upstairs to bed, and just as darkness descended upon
the house he saw his landlady painfully trying to raise the hat-stand,
while with the other arm she felt aimlessly for strands of tumbled
hair.

Next morning Michael was surprised to see Mrs. Murdoch enter very
cheerfully with his tea; her hair that so short a time since had seemed
eternally intractable had now shriveled into subjugator