Читать книгу Anna of the Five Towns онлайн

38 страница из 61

During dinner a boy brought a note for her father. He read it, snorted, and threw it across the table to Anna.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘that’s your affair.’

The letter was from Titus Price: it said that he was sorry to be compelled to break his promise, but it was quite impossible for him to pay twenty pounds on account of rent that day; he would endeavour to pay at least twenty pounds in a week’s time.

‘You’d better call there, after you’ve been to th’ Bank,’ said Tellwright, ‘and get summat out of him, if it’s only ten pun.’

‘Must I go to Edward Street?’

‘Yes.’

‘What am I to say? I’ve never been there before.’

‘Well, it’s high time as ye began to look after your own property. You mun see owd Price, and tell him ye canna accept any excuses.’

‘How much does he owe?’

‘He owes ye a hundred and twenty-five pun altogether—he’s five quarters in arrear.’

‘A hundred and—! Well, I never!’ Anna was aghast. The sum appeared larger to her than all the thousands and tens of thousands which she had received in the morning. She reflected that the weekly bills of the household amounted to about a sovereign, and that the total of this debt of Price’s would therefore keep them in food for two years. The idea of being in debt was abhorrent to her. She could not conceive how a man who was in debt could sleep at nights. ‘Mr. Price ought to be ashamed of himself,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m sure he’s quite able to pay.’ The image of the sleek and stout superintendent of the Sunday-school, arrayed in his rich, almost voluptuous, broadcloth, offended her profoundly. That he, debtor and promise-breaker, should have the effrontery to pray for the souls of children, to chastise their petty furtive crimes, was nearly incredible.