: Men of Marlowe's by Dudeney Henry Mrs - City and town life Fiction; England Fiction; Short stories English; Death Fiction

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k. He was like a woman; took these things to heart. I shall never forget how pleased he was when he came to tell me that he'd got a treasure at last.

She was very smart; a rather supercilious young married woman, with long earrings and a pert, white face. She came to the Inn wearing black kid gloves and a silver locket and chain; she carried a little reticule with her apron rolled up tightly inside. Things went very well for a week. She kept the place spotless. But when Arnold paid her on Saturday afternoon, she asked him civilly to "suit himself."

"The work's far too heavy," she said mincingly, "and the rooms is invested with beadles to an awful extent. It's not as if I was obliged to work, you see, sir. I only do it to occupy my time--not having any children--and to help pay back the money my husband's mother lent him. There's no hurry for that. She's in a good position. Got her own laundry, paid seven hundred down for it. My husband was in the army, and she bought him out before we were married. I couldn't think of marrying a soldier--all the refuge goes into the army. If only you could get a girl to come in and do the rough work for a hour every morning, my husband wouldn't object to me obliging you."

"What's a man to do?" Arnold asked dejectedly of me in the evening. "I'm half inclined to chuck the Inn and go back to diggings; the Common was good for the dog to run on. But then there's the landlady--she always objects to dogs. And some of them have principles--I call all principle prejudice--about the latch key."

"You'd better take back Mrs. Neaves. Give her a shilling a week more; that's all she was trying for. You'd save in the end. How many have you had altogether?"

He began to count on his fingers.

"You've told me lots of times. Now, take my advice and have Mrs. Neaves back. She wasn't a bad sort."

"She was very kind to Sol; used to bring him an apron full of bones," he said reflectively.

When he said that, I knew the thing was settled and that Mrs. Neaves would be reinstated. He was devoted to Sol, who was a beautiful, pure-bred deerhound, with the long, melancholy face and almost human eyes which these dogs have.

Poor Arnold! I don't know what has become of him. But I can make a good guess. He's living somewhere in the suburbs, very near the Common--for Sol's sake. He was a dapper little fellow. One of those men with a rather big head, neat calves, and a chain with a big seal. He wore loud check suits--four checks to the suit--when he went away on a holiday, and when he was at home he had an incorrigible habit of wasting his time at bars and chaffing the barmaid. That is nothing; every man is bachelor to the barmaid. But it led Arnold into complications.

Clarissa was an extraordinarily pretty girl. She had blue eyes set very far apart, and a striking profile. With her loose knot of hair, her delicate nose, and her short upper lip, she looked like a cameo--one of those pure, classic faces which middle-aged ladies used to wear in a brooch. Of course she was powdered, and she laced tightly and puffed her lovely hair out into one of those exaggerated erections which is the professional headgear of the barmaid. You never see such an arrangement anywhere else; perhaps the management provides it. But she was very lovely and demure. Also, she had the sense to be silent: an unusually pretty woman should never talk.

Arnold, who dropped into the "Worcester Arms" nightly, began to regard her as a woman--not merely a barmaid. Men sometimes talk dubiously to the barmaid, and she--figuratively speaking--ducks her head and lets the stream of insinuation flow over her. She is never affronted; takes it as a matter of course; customers pay for this privilege with their drinks.

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