About half-past four."
Sophia finished her tea quickly, and rose.
"Shall I tell Mr. Povey he can come?"
(Mr. Povey had his tea after the ladies of the house.)
"Yes, if you will stay in the shop till I come.
Light me the gas before you go."
Sophia took a wax taper from a vase on the mantelpiece, stuck it in the fire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal cloister with a mild report.
"What's all that clay on your boots, child?" asked Mrs. Baines.
"Clay?" repeated Sophia, staring foolishly at her boots.
"Yes," said Mrs. Baines.
"It looks like marl.
Where on earth have you been?"
She interrogated her daughter with an upward gaze, frigid and unconsciously hostile, through her gold-rimmed glasses.
"I must have picked it up on the roads," said Sophia, and hastened to the door.
"Sophia!"
"Yes, mother."
"Shut the door."
Sophia unwillingly shut the door which she had half opened.
"Come here."
Sophia obeyed, with falling lip.
"You are deceiving me, Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with fierce solemnity.
"Where have you been this afternoon?"
Sophia's foot was restless on the carpet behind the table.
"I haven't been anywhere," she murmured glumly.
"Have you seen young Scales?"
"Yes," said Sophia with grimness, glancing audaciously for an instant at her mother. ("She can't kill me: She can't kill me," her heart muttered.
And she had youth and beauty in her favour, while her mother was only a fat middle-aged woman.
"She can't kill me," said her heart, with the trembling, cruel insolence of the mirror-flattered child.)
"How came you to meet him?"
No answer.
"Sophia, you heard what I said!"
Still no answer.
Sophia looked down at the table. ("She can't kill me.")
"If you are going to be sullen, I shall have to suppose the worst," said Mrs. Baines.
Sophia kept her silence.
"Of course," Mrs. Baines resumed, "if you choose to be wicked, neither your mother nor any one else can stop you.
There are certain things I CAN do, and these I SHALL do ... Let me warn you that young Scales is a thoroughly bad lot.
I know all about him.
He has been living a wild life abroad, and if it hadn't been that his uncle is a partner in Birkinshaws, they would never have taken him on again."
A pause.
"I hope that one day you will be a happy wife, but you are much too young yet to be meeting young men, and nothing would ever induce me to let you have anything to do with this Scales.
I won't have it.
In future you are not to go out alone.
You understand me?"
Sophia kept silence.
"I hope you will be in a better frame of mind to-morrow. I can only hope so.
But if you aren't, I shall take very severe measures.
You think you can defy me. But you never were more mistaken in your life.
I don't want to see any more of you now.
Go and tell Mr. Povey; and call Maggie for the fresh tea.