When Miss Perkins entered the spare room, big with ideas which contracted her face into a grim solemnity, speech on her part was forestalled. Millie took the initiative, saying, in her slow spiritless voice, the very words which Miss Perkins had been debating how to speak.
"Isn't it almost time for us to talk a little about my plans? I don't think—" with a faint tinge of colour—"that I ought to let things go on so any longer. Only I have dreaded having to face life again. Everything is so changed for me."
Miss Perkins was not good at the expression of sympathy, especially in one of her perverse moods. She cleared her throat, and stood gazing at Millie, sorry below, grim above.
"It did not seem as if I could let myself think sooner. But I know time is getting on, and I must not be a coward. Things have to be arranged. You have been very good to me, Miss Perkins."
Miss Perkins sniffed, and hoped she'd done her duty.
"More than your duty." This was a needless assertion, since no man can do more than his duty in any walk of life. Duty includes the utmost, and the utmost cannot be surpassed.
"But," continued Millie, "the spring is getting on, and I suppose—"
Millie came to a pause. Miss Perkins felt that the opportunity was not to be lost.
"It'll soon be the time of letting, if it isn't that now," she said.
"Yes; so I thought. How much do you get for this room generally?"