"Go to Southend for Easter, Alb."
"Buy you a pretty ring and take you to the Crystal Palace."
"Drive a pony to Epping, Alb, and come back in the moonlight."
"Down to Brighton for the Saturday and two in the water together."
"Flash it on 'em in Thrawl Street and make Chris Denham cry."
They laughed together and cuddled joyously at a dream so bewildering. Their united wealth that night was three shillings, of which Alb had two and four pence. What untold possibilities in five pounds, what sunshine and laughter and joy. Ah, that the dark court should be waiting for them, the squalor, the misery, the woe of it. Who can wonder that the shadows so soon engulfed them?
"Kiss me, Alb," she said at the corner, "shall I see you to-morrow night, dear?"
"Outside the Pav at nine. You can tell me how your father took it. Say I hope he'll get his rights. I think he always liked me rather, Lois."
"A sight more than ever he liked me, Alb, and that's truth. Ah, my dear, you'll take me away from here some day, won't you, Alb? You'll take me away where none shall ever know, where I shall see the world and forget what I have been. Kiss me, Alb--I'm that low to-night, dear, I could cry my heart out."
He obeyed her instantly. A voice of human suffering never failed to make an instant appeal to him.
"As true as God's in heaven, if ever I get rich, I'll come first to Lois with the story," he said--and so he bent and kissed her on the lips as gently as though she had been his little sister.