"There's a many it takes like that. It ain't nothing."
He paused for his payment, and then Cuckoo remembered that she had no
money. The thought did not worry her; it seemed too far off.
"I ain't got no money," she said.
Cabby's jaw dropped.
"Wait a second," she said. "Go out, I'll get some."
The man withdrew doubtfully, then Cuckoo robbed Julian. She, who had
never yet taken money from him, stole the price of his fare to her
protection. Then she let the cabman out, locked the street door, and
returned. She sat down by Julian, who still appeared to sleep. And now
suddenly she felt that she was starving. She looked round the room; there
was nothing upon the table. Mrs. Brigg, an hour after her "Te Deum," had
been seized in the claws of reaction, and had repented of her generosity.
Suspicions and doubts obscured the previous rapture of her mind. She
bethought herself that Cuckoo might chance to return alone, still
penniless; she remembered the rent still owing. Her impulse to kill
fatted calves suddenly struck her as the act of a mad woman. As locusts
clear a smiling country of all that nourishes, she swept the table of
Cuckoo clear, impounding to her larder with trembling, eager hands the
food that might never have been paid for.
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