And she hesitated.
"Don't be silly!" she said.
"I'll try not to be," said Denry. So far as he could remember, he had
never used such a tone before. Ruth swerved away to rejoin Nellie.
Denry surreptitiously counted the halfpennies. There were eighteen. She
had fed those machines, then, with over a hundred and thirty pence.
He murmured, "Thick, thick!"
Considering that he had returned to Llandudno in the full intention of
putting his foot down, of clearly conveying to Ruth that his conception
of finance differed from hers, the second sojourn had commenced badly.
Still, he had promised to marry her, and he must marry her. Better a
lifetime of misery and insolvency than a failure to behave as a
gentleman should. Of course, if she chose to break it off.... But he
must be minutely careful to do nothing which might lead to a breach.
Such was Denry's code. The walk home at midnight, amid the
reverberations of the falling tempest, was marked by a slight
pettishness on the part of Ruth, and by Denry's polite taciturnity.
V
Yet the next morning, as the three companions sat together under the
striped awning of the buffet on the pier, nobody could have divined, by
looking at them, that one of them at any rate was the most uncomfortable
young man in all Llandudno.
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