Really, the way our lodger pestered my sisters and myself with his absolute inattentions is difficult to explain. Anyone might have thought that he did not know we were there. While the Proposal Competitions were on, not one of us thought it worth while to waste time on the man. We could get a better return for the same amount of fascination in other quarters. Afterwards I thought that possibly his employment in the milk-trade might be the cause of his extraordinary mildness, and that it would be kind to offer him a little encouragement.
He usually went for a walk on Sunday mornings, and one Sunday I said that I would accompany him.
"Better not," he said. "Looks to me like rain."
"But you have an umbrella," I pointed out.
"Aye," he said, "and when two people share one umbrella, they both get all the drippings from it and none of the protection. You take a nice book and read for a bit."
"No," I said. "I'm coming with you, and though it's Leap Year, I definitely promise not to propose to you."
"Well," he said, "that makes a difference."
I thrust my arm into his gaily and confidentially, and he immediately unhooked. We went on to the Heath together.
"I was once told by a palmist," I said, "that I had a mysterious and magnetic attraction for men."
"Those palmists will say anything," he said. "It's just the other way round really."
"Perhaps," I said. "I know I have an unlimited capacity for love--and nobody seems to want it."
"Ah," he said, "it's a pity to be overstocked with a perishable article. It means parting with it at a loss."
What could I say to a brute like that? And I had nobody there to protect me.
"I wish," I said, "that you'd look if I've a fly in my eye."
"If you had, you'd know," he answered. "The fly sees to that."
Some minutes elapsed before I asked him to tie my shoe-lace.
He looked down and said that it was not undone.
I simply turned round and left him, I was not going to stay there to be insulted.
However, he must have been ashamed of himself, for two days later he sub-let his part of the floor in one of the rooms at the Warren to an Irish family. If he was not ashamed, he was frightened.
Yet, curiously enough, that cowardly brute moulded my future.
The influx of the Irish family into the Warren drove me out of it. It made me feel the absolute necessity for a wider sphere.