when the voice
which was of wont so affectionate turned to severity, but she could not
excuse herself till the storm was over. And it was most often from the
elder girl that the first words of reconcilement came.

'That's your Totty Nancarrow,' Lydia went on, with no check upon her
tongue. 'Didn't I tell you what 'ud come of going about with her? What
next, I should like to know! If you go on and sing in a public-house, I
don't know what you won't do. I shall never trust you out by yourself
again. You shan't go out at night at all, that's about it!'

'You've no right to speak to me like that, Lydia,' Thyrza replied, with
indignation. The excitement and the fainting fit had strung her nerves
painfully; and, for all her repentance, the echo of applause was still
very sweet in her ears. This vehement reproach caused a little injury
to her pride. 'It doesn't depend on you whether I go out or not. I'm
not a child, and I can take care of myself. I haven't done nothing
wrong.'

'You have--and you know you have! You knew I shouldn't have let you go
near such a place. You know how I've begged you not to go with Totty
Nancarrow, and how you've promised me you wouldn't be led into no harm.
I shall never be able to trust you again. You _are_ only a child! You
show it! And in future you'll do as I tell you!'

Thyrza caught up her hat.

'I'm not going to stop here whilst you're in such a bad temper,' she
said, in a trembling voice; 'you'll find that isn't the way to make me
do as you wish.'

She stepped to the door. Lydia, frightened, sprang forward and barred
the way.

'Go and sit down, Thyrza!'

'Let me go! What right have you to stop me?'

Then both were silent. At the same moment they became aware that a
common incident of Saturday night was occurring had got thus far on
their way home, the wife's shrill tongue in the street below. A
half-tipsy man and a nagging woman running over every scale of
scurrility and striking every note of ingenious malice. The man was at
length worked to a pitch of frenzy, and then--thud, thud, mingled with
objurgations and shrill night-piercing yells. Fury little short of
murderous was familiar enough to dwellers in this region, but that
woman's bell-clapper tongue had struck shame into Lydia. She could not
speak another angry word.

'Thyrza, take your hat off,' she said quietly, moving away a little
from the door. Her cheeks burned, and she quivered in the subsidence of
her temper.

H