y home.

"Oh," she said carelessly, "I s'pose I should turn tu and get some work
to du and keep things going somehow."

"Would you let him have any pocket-money?"

"Ay, I 'spect I should--enough for his pint."

There's not a shadow of doubt but she would do both.

15

Tony has always been a man for the girls; so much so, and so naively,
that whatever he might do would seem quite innocent; as innocent as the
love-play of animals. Along the Front, of an evening, he calls out,
"How be 'ee, my dear?" to any girl he chooses, and perhaps takes her
arm for a few steps. Given half a chance, he snatches a playful kiss.
They never seem to turn rusty with him. He has the primitive quality of
knocking their conventionality to bits at one blow.

[Sidenote: _FLIRTATIONS_]

Just before the Perkinses left, he turned out at five in the morning to
see if the high long tide was flowing up to the boats. At six he made
tea and went with it to bed again. When he came downstairs at eight
o'clock (in his pants, darning the seat of his trousers), Mrs Widger
and Mrs Perkins both had breakfasts frying on the fire. Mrs Widger,
very loud-voiced that morning, was packing the children off to school;
Mrs Perkins was bent over the pan, browning sausages. Tony crept up
behind her, seized her by the waist, and kissed her.

"Oh, you naughty man!" said Mrs Perkins, who was married out of a
drapery establishment and has the drapery style of talking to
perfection. "If my dear hubby knew...."

"Tell him!" retorted Tony. "I be ready for 'en. I feels lively this
morning. I'll gie 'ee another if yu'll darn thees yer trousers for me.
Thic Mam 'Idger there won't du nort. You wuden' think I'd had two
nights o'it, wude 'ee? I went to bed last night, an' then I got up,
five o'clock, and 'cause there weren't nort doing I went to bed again
an' had an hour or an hour an' a half's more sleep."

"Oh, you sleepy man!"

"I didn' want to sleep. I wanted the missis here to cuddle me, on'y her
'ouldn't. Her turned away from me that cold.... I went off to sleep.
An' when I woke up again, thinkin' her'd cuddle me then, her gave me a
kick an' got out bed. I never see'd ort like it. Her ain't what her
used to be, for all her ain't a bad li'l thing, thee's know."

"G'out!" said Mrs Widger. "I be older--and wiser."

"Don' know about that. I shall go into Plymouth an' git a nice li'l
girl there.... Oh, I've know'd plenty on 'em. All the li'l girls likes
ol' Tony."