11
Thoroughly frightened she hurried with clenched hands down the little mean street ready to give up her scheme at the first sight of an unfriendly eye. “We went through those awful side streets off the West End; I was terrified; I didn’t know where he was driving us,” Mrs. Poole had said about a cabman driving to the theatre ... and her face as she sat in her thick pink dress by the dining-room fire had been cunning and mean and full of terror. A small shop appeared close at hand, there were newspaper posters propped outside it and its window was full of fly-blown pipes, toilet requisites, stationery and odd-looking books. “Letters may be left here,” said a dirty square of cardboard in the corner of the window. “That’s all right,” thought Miriam, “it’s a sort of agency.” She plunged into the gloomy interior. “Yes!” shouted a tall stout man with a red coarse face coming forward, as if she had asked something that had made him angry. “I want some notepaper, just a little, the smallest quantity you have and an envelope,” said Miriam, quivering and panic-stricken in the hostile atmosphere. The man turned and whisked a small packet off a shelf, throwing it down on the counter before her. “One penny!” bellowed the man as she took it up. “Oh, thank you,” murmured Miriam ingratiatingly putting down twopence. “Do you sell pencils?” The man’s great fingers seemed an endless time wrenching a small metal-sheathed pencil from its card. The street outside would have closed in and swallowed her up forever if she did not quickly get away.