; unless he
can manage with Mabel and Mr. Ponting. She's a good girl, Mabel. And
he's got a kind heart, Ranny, that young man."

"D'you think I haven't?"

"I wasn't meaning you, my dear. Come, I'm ready now."

They went downstairs. Mrs. Ransome paused at the kitchen door to give
some final directions to Mabel, the maid, and a message for Mr. Ponting,
the assistant; and they went out.

As they were going down the High Street, her thoughts reverted to
Ranny's awful outburst.

"Ranny, I wish you hadn't spoken to your uncle like you did."

"I _know_, Mother--but he set my back up. He was talkin' through his
Sunday hat all the time, pretendin' to stick up for Virelet, knowin'
perfectly well what she is, and cussin' and swearin' at her for it in
his heart, and naggin' at me because there wasn't anybody else to go
for."

"He was trying to help you, Ranny."

"If God can't help me, strikes me it's pretty fair cheek of Uncle to
presume--" He meditated.

"But he wasn't tryin' to help me. He was thinkin' how he could help his
own damned respectability all the blessed time. He knows what a bloomin'
hell it's been for Virelet and me this last year--and he'd have forced
us back into it--into all that misery--just to save his own silly skin."

"No, dear, it isn't that. He doesn't think Vi'let should be let go on
living like she is if you can stop her. He thinks it isn't proper."

"Well, that's what I say. It's his old blinkin', bletherin' morality
he's takin' care of, not me. Everybody's got to live like he thinks they
ought to, no matter how they hate it. If two Kilkenny cats he knew was
to get married and one of them was to bolt he'd fetch her back and tie
'em both up, heads together, so as she shouldn't do it again. And if
they clawed each other's guts out he wouldn't care. He'd say they were
livin' a nice, virtuous, respectable and moral life.

"What rot it all is!

"Stop her? As if any one could stop her! God knows she can't stop
herself, poor girl. She's made like that. I'm not blamin' her."

For, with whatever wildness Ranny started, he always came back to
that--He didn't blame her. He knew whereof she was made. It was proof of
his sudden, forced maturity, that unfaltering acceptance of the fact.

"Talk of helpin'! Strikes me poor Vi's helpin' more than anybody, by
clearin' out like she's done."

That was how, with a final incomparable serenity, he made it out.

But his mother took it all as so much wildness