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called Budgen; he's a labourer, and she's lame. They've got one son. The Hughs have let off the first-floor front-room to an old man named Creed---" "Yes, I know," Cecilia muttered. "He makes about one and tenpence a day by selling papers. The back-room on that floor they let, of course, to your little model, Aunt B." "She is not my model now." There was a silence such as falls when no one knows how far the matter mentioned is safe to, touch on. Thyme proceeded with her report. "Her room's much the best in the house; it's airy, and it looks out over someone's garden. I suppose she stays there because it's so cheap. The Hughs' rooms are---" She stopped, wrinkling her straight nose. "So that's the household," said Hilary. "Two married couples, one young man, one young girl"--his eyes travelled from one to another of the two married couples, the young man, and the young girl, collected in this room--"and one old man," he added softly. "Not quite the sort of place for you to go poking about in, Thyme," Stephen said ironically. "Do you think so, Martin?" "Why not?" Stephen raised his brows, and glanced towards his wife. Her face was dubious, a little scared. There was a silence. Then Bianca spoke: "Well?" That word, like nearly all her speeches, seemed rather to disconcert her hearers. "So Hughs ill-treats her?" said Hilary. "She says so," replied Cecilia--"at least, that's what I understood. Of course, I don't know any details." "She had better get rid of him, I should think," Bianca murmured. Out of the silence that followed Thyme's clear voice was heard saying: "She can't get a divorce; she could get a separation." Cecilia rose uneasily. These words concreted suddenly a wealth of half-acknowledged doubts about her little daughter. This came of letting her hear people talk, and go about with Martin! She might even have been listening to her grandfather--such a thought was most disturbing. And, afraid, on the one hand, of gainsaying the liberty of speech, and, on the other, of seeming to approve her daughter's knowledge of the world, she looked at her husband. But Stephen did not speak, feeling, no doubt, that to pursue the subject would be either to court an ethical, even an abstract, disquisition, and this one did not do in anybody's presence, much less one's wife's or daughter's; or to touch on sordid facts of doubtful character, which was equally distasteful in the circumstances. He,
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