The Way Home by Henry Handel Richardson — Read

Tilly said: "My dear! the minute I set eyes on 'er, I knew she was a fraud. And I thinks to myself: 'Just you wait, milady, till the lights go out, and I'll cook your goose for you!' Well, sure enough, there we all sat 'and-in-hand in the dark, like a party of kids playing 'unt-the-slipper. And by-and-by one and another squeals: 'I'm touched!' What do I do, Mary? Why, I gradually work the hand I'm 'olding in me right, closer to me left, till I'd got THEM joined and me right 'and free. (It's as easy as Punch if you know 'ow to do it.) And when the man next me--oh, 'e WAS a solemn old josser!--when 'e said in a voice that seemed to come from 'is boots: 'The spirits 'ave deigned to touch me'-- as if 'e'd said: 'God Almighty 'as arrived and is present!' --I made one grab, and got 'old of--now what do you think? I'm danged if it wasn't 'er false chignon I found in my hand. I thought she was going to give me the slip then, after all: she wriggled like an eel. But I held on like grim death and, luckily for me, she'd a few 'airs left still clinging to her cranium. She squeals like a pig. 'Up with the lights,' says I; ' I've got 'er!' 'Turn up the lights if you dare,' cries she: 'it'll kill me.' Over goes a chair in the scrimmage, and then they did turn 'em up, and there was she squirming on the floor, bald like an egg, with I don't know how many false gloves and feathers and things pinned on to 'er body!"

Tilly sat by the fire in Mary's bedroom, her black silk skirts turned back from the blaze. She was in high feather, exhilarated by her own acumen as by the smartness with which she had conducted the exposure. Opposite her Mary, her head tied up in red flannel, crippled by the heavy cold and the face-ache that had confined her to the house, listened with a sinking heart. It was all very well for Tilly to preen herself on what she had done: Richard would see it in a very different light. He had gone straight to his study on entering; and hurrying out in her dressing-gown to learn what had brought the two of them home so early, Mary had caught a glimpse of his face. It was enough. When Richard looked like that, all was over. His hatred of a scene in public amounted to a mania.