With a gesture which made him yet
more like a drunken man he turned from the pavement and entered. . . .
About nine o'clock in the evening, just when Mrs. Hewett had put the
unwilling children to bed, and had given her baby a sleeping-dose--
it had cried incessantly for eighteen hours,--the door of the room
was pushed open. Her husband came in. She stood looking at him--
unable to credit the evidence of her eyes.
'John!'
She laid her hand upon him and stared into his face. The man shook
her off, without speaking, and moved staggeringly forward. Then he
turned round, waved his arm, and shouted:
'Let her go to the devil She cares nothing for her father.'
He threw himself upon the bed, and soon sank into drunken sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
A WELCOME GUEST
The bells of St. James's, Clerkenwell, ring melodies in intervals of
the pealing for service-time. One morning of spring their music,
like the rain that fell intermittently, was flung westwards by the
boisterous wind, away over Clerkenwell Close, until the notes failed
one by one, or were clashed out of existence by the clamour of a
less civilised steeple. Had the wind been under mortal control it
would doubtless have blown thus violently and in this quarter in
order that the inhabitants of the House of Detention might derive no
solace from the melody.
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