470 ANGEL PAVEMENT

"Straight home. That's my way now," replied Mr.
Smeeth, and he went as fast as he could go to Chaucer
Road, He was still rather alarmed and astonished, for
police court affairs were remote from his experience and
he had a horror of them, but he was chiefly indignant,
indignant at the thought that this business, which took
George to court and might take his employer to gaol,
should have been kept from him. Did his wife know
all about it, and had she deliberately hidden it out of his
sight? He could hear her saying to George, "Now don't
you say a word to your father about this. You know
what he is." Yes, something like that, If she really had
done that, then they would have a quarrel. This was
serious. My word, what a life! You never knew what
was happening.

He arrived home to find his wife still absent and Edna
and her friend, Minnie Watson, screaming with laughter
in the dining-room. "Just a minute, Edna, I want
you," he said sternly. She followed him into the other
room.

"Where's George?"

"I don't know, Dad. Working, 1 suppose, down at the
garage. What's the matter?'7

"Did you know anything about this police court
business?"

Edna stared at him, her chocolate-stained mouth open.
"What police court business? What are you talking
about, Dad? Has it something to do with George?"

"Never mind about that. You don't know anything
about it, eh?" It certainly didn't look as if she did, but
Mr. Smeeth told himself wearily that you could never
tell, not with children like these, such a strange secretive
lot "All right, it doesn't matter. Where is this garage?