Whenever he felt tempted to lie to her he pulled himself up
pathetically, and she saw that he was really trying to keep his tongue
under control. When everything else palled they played Noughts and
Crosses, or Parson's Cat, or Consequences. Mrs. King had asked them
repeatedly to play cards with her "young chaps" in the kitchen, but
Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs
to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in
the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people,
and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks."
Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying he was
abominably lazy.
Money became more and more scarce, but this worried her not at all. She
was coming to associate the possession of money with Louis's
restlessness, for always on English mail days he was restless and bad
tempered until she had paid away practically all their money, when he
became calm again. She began to think that if she could devise a way of
living by barter, without money at all, they might conceivably eliminate
these fits of restlessness and petulance. And all the time, as there
seemed no chance of getting work, she was racking her brains for some
way of getting out of the city before his next intermittent outburst
came along.
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