I must
have forgotten to go to bed. It's a queer thing. I 've got a most
beastly headache. Mind you don't say anything, Mrs. Jones.
[Goes out and passes MARLOW in the doorway. MARLOW is young
and quiet; he is cleanshaven, and his hair is brushed high from
his forehead in a coxcomb. Incidentally a butler, he is first
a man. He looks at MRS. JONES, and smiles a private smile.]
MARLOW. Not the first time, and won't be the last. Looked a bit
dicky, eh, Mrs. Jones?
MRS. JONES. He did n't look quite himself. Of course I did n't
take notice.
MARLOW. You're used to them. How's your old man?
MRS. JONES. [Softly as throughout.] Well, he was very bad last
night; he did n't seem to know what he was about. He was very late,
and he was most abusive. But now, of course, he's asleep.
MARLOW. That's his way of finding a job, eh?
MRS. JONES. As a rule, Mr. Marlow, he goes out early every morning
looking for work, and sometimes he comes in fit to drop--and of
course I can't say he does n't try to get it, because he does.
Trade's very bad. [She stands quite still, her fan and brush before
her, at the beginning and the end of long vistas of experience,
traversing them with her impersonal eye.
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