"Everything'll be all right!" he said gaily.
"Everything'll be all right. Only it'll be all wrong for Dan."
"Whatever do you mean, Mr. Critchlow?" she protested.
Nothing, she reflected, could rouse pity in that heart, not even a tragedy like Daniel's.
She bit her lip for having spoken.
"Well," he said in loud tones, frankly addressing the girls round the stove as much as Constance.
"I've met with some rare good arguments this new year, no mistake!
There's been some as say that Dan never meant to do it.
That's as may be.
But if it's a good reason for not hanging, there's an end to capital punishment in this country.
'Never meant'!
There's a lot of 'em as 'never meant'!
Then I'm told as she was a gallivanting woman and no housekeeper, and as often drunk as sober.
I'd no call to be told that.
If strangling is a right punishment for a wife as spends her time in drinking brandy instead of sweeping floors and airing sheets, then Dan's safe.
But I don't seem to see Judge Lindley telling the jury as it is.
I've been a juryman under Judge Lindley myself--and more than once--and I don't seem to see him, like!"
He paused with his mouth open. "As for all them nobs," he continued, "including th' rector, as have gone to Stafford to kiss the book and swear that Dan's reputation is second to none--if they could ha' sworn as Dan wasn't in th' house at all that night, if they could ha' sworn he was in Jericho, there'd ha' been some sense in their going.
But as it is, they'd ha' done better to stop at home and mind their business.
Bless us!
Sam wanted ME to go!"
He laughed again, in the faces of the horrified and angry women.
"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Critchlow!
I really am!" Constance exclaimed.
And the assistants inarticulately supported her with vague sounds.
Miss Insull got up and poked the stove.
Every soul in the establishment was loyally convinced that Daniel Povey would be acquitted, and to breathe a doubt on the brightness of this certainty was a hideous crime.
The conviction was not within the domain of reason; it was an act of faith; and arguments merely fretted, without in the slightest degree disturbing it.
"Ye may be!" Mr. Critchlow gaily concurred.
He was very content.
Just as he shuffled round to leave the shop, Cyril entered.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Critchlow," said Cyril, sheepishly polite.
Mr. Critchlow gazed hard at the boy, then nodded his head several times rapidly, as though to say:
"Here's another fool in the making!
So the generations follow one another!"
He made no answer to the salutation, and departed.
Cyril ran round to his mother's corner, pitching his bag on to the showroom stairs as he passed them.
Taking off his hat, he kissed her, and she unbuttoned his overcoat with her cold hands.
"What's old Methuselah after?" he demanded.
"Hush!" Constance softly corrected him.
"He came in to tell me the trial had started."
"Oh, I knew that!
A boy bought a paper and I saw it.
I say, mother, will father be in the paper?" And then in a different tone: "I say, mother, what is there for tea?"
When his stomach had learnt exactly what there was for tea, the boy began to show an immense and talkative curiosity in the trial.
He would not set himself to his home-lessons. "It's no use, mother," he said,
"I can't."
They returned to the shop together, and Cyril would go every moment to the door to listen for the cry of a newsboy.
Presently he hit upon the idea that perhaps newsboys might be crying the special edition of the Signal in the market- place, in front of the Town Hall, to the neglect of St. Luke's Square.
And nothing would satisfy him but he must go forth and see.