At midnight the study door opened. Yule came to the dining-room
to see that all was right, and it surprised him to find his wife
still sitting there.
'Why are you so late?'
'I've forgot the time.'
'Forgotten, forgotten. Don't go back to that kind of language
again. Come, put the light out.'
PART TWO
CHAPTER VIII. TO THE WINNING SIDE
Of the acquaintances Yule had retained from his earlier years
several were in the well-defined category of men with
unpresentable wives. There was Hinks, for instance, whom, though
in anger he spoke of him as a bore, Alfred held in some genuine
regard. Hinks made perhaps a hundred a year out of a kind of
writing which only certain publishers can get rid of and of this
income he spent about a third on books. His wife was the daughter
of a laundress, in whose house he had lodged thirty years ago,
when new to London but already long-acquainted with hunger; they
lived in complete harmony, but Mrs Hinks, who was four years the
elder, still spoke the laundress tongue, unmitigated and
immitigable. Another pair were Mr and Mrs Gorbutt.
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