Joe had got one arm through the ironwork at the head of the bed, and was tearing off little slips of the peeling wallpaper in the corner. She took hold of his hot hand, and silently guided it back through the ironwork on to the bed.
"Shall I give you another dose?" she suggested tentatively, with brow creased.
He nodded. He knew malaria and he knew quinine; and, fortified by his expert approval, she gave him another dose. Both of them had the belief that if five grains of a medicine did you ten per cent. of "good," ten grains would assuredly do you twenty per cent. of good, and so on in proportion.
"I'm coming in again in a minute or two. I've just got to go across the Steps on an errand," she said, and kissed him. Both of them had also the belief that her kisses did him good; and this conviction was better founded than the other one. She had said nothing to him about Mrs. Earlforward's operation. He had learnt only that Elsie was mistress because Mrs. Earlforward was in hospital; the full story might have aggravated his mental distress.
"Elsie!" It was Mr. Earlforward's summons as she crossed the landing on her way down.
She put no more than her face--a rather mettlesome face--into the room.
"What do you keep on going upstairs for?"
Yes. He suspected. With strange presence of mind she replied promptly:
"I've just been up for the key of the shop, sir. I left it up in my room. I can't go out and leave the shop door on the latch, can I?"
"Oh, very well. Very well!" She was hostile again.
This time she shut the bedroom door, ignoring his protest. Then she went upstairs once more and locked her own door on the outside and carried off the key. At any rate, if in some impossible caprice he should take it into his head to prowl about the house in her absence, he should not pry into her room. He had no right to do so. And she was absolutely determined to defend her possession of Joe. A moment later she bounced into Mr. Earlforward's bedroom, and carelessly dropped all the letters on to the bed--a regular shower of envelopes and packets.
"There!" she exclaimed, on a hard and inimical note, as if saying: "You asked for them. You've got them. And I wash my hands of it all."
Mr. Earlforward saw that he must walk warily. She was a changing Elsie, a disagreeably astonishing Elsie. He did not quite know where he was with her.