IT was a knife. Yet it had not dealt exactly the kind of blow that he had looked for. Even if the stab was softer, and of that at the moment he was not quite sure, undoubtedly there was poison in the wound. In a flash he saw that, somehow, it had strengthened her position and weakened his. “You never told me he’d bought the business.” The tone was a confession of impotence.

“He hasn’t bought it.”

But, in face of the facts, the fine exterior and the large and expensive stock this was a quibble and it was too palpable. “How did you come by all that stuff in the window then?”

“He’s helping me to run it.”

“Helping you to run it!” His face was a picture of simple incredulity.

“He paid up all we owed so that we could start fair. And he looks in every Monday morning and tells me what to buy and where to buy it.”

“Does he pay for it?”

“He does.” There was something like pride in her voice. “He pays cash. And I have to keep books—like I used to at the Duke of Wellington. Of course he’s only lending the money. I pay him back at the end of the month when I balance the accounts.”

He was dumfounded by this precise statement. The hand of his mean, narrow father-in-law was not recognizable. Somehow it seemed to alter everything, but not at once was he able to turn his mind to the new and unexpected situation.

One thing was clear, however; it would be vain to resent Josiah’s interference. He had bought the property over their heads and he could do what he liked with his own. Again Melia had been left in debt and her husband knew well enough that unless some special providence had intervened she might not have been able to carry on. Exactly why Josiah had done as he had done neither his daughter nor his son-in-law could fathom. They hated to receive these belated favors, yet as things were there was no way of escaping them.

A little reluctantly, yet with a feeling of intense relief, Bill took off his good khaki overcoat and hung it on the nail provided for the purpose on the curtained door. Melia toasted a pickelet at the clear fire, buttered it richly, set it in a dish in the fender to keep warm; then the kettle began to boil and she brewed the tea.

As she did all this Bill noticed that there was a new air of alertness, of competence about her; there was a light in her eyes, a decision in her actions; she seemed to have more interest in life. And for himself, as he sat at the table with its clean cloth and shining knives and spoons and bright sugar bowl and she handed him his tea just as he liked it, with one lump of sugar and not too much milk, he felt something changing in him suddenly. In a way of speaking it was a kind of rebirth.

They didn’t talk much. Melia was not a talking sort, nor was he except when he had “had a drop,” and he didn’t get “drops” now. Besides, in any case, the army seemed to have taken anything superfluous in the way of talk out of him, as it did with most. But he was honestly glad to be back in the peaceful four walls of his home. And it was not certain, although Melia carefully refrained from hinting as much, that she was not honestly glad to see him there. At all events she got his slippers for him presently out of the boot cupboard; and then, unasked, she made a spill of paper for him and laid it on the table by his elbow, a sufficient intimation that he was expected to light his pipe.

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