KINDLY INTEREST
[Page 134]
"I'd better go and ask Miss Joyce about it," she decided.
Miss Joyce still took the Arts and Crafts classes at the High School, but she was always so busy that she had no time for private conversations with individual pupils. For several months her remarks to Lesbia had been confined to professional criticisms. The invitation to come and see her at her rooms still held open, however, and Lesbia determined to avail herself of it. She knew Miss Joyce worked in her studio on Thursdays, and would therefore be at home to a chance visitor.
So on Thursday afternoon, when school was over, she deliberately missed the Morton Common tram-car, banished the Pattersons temporarily from her mind, and walked down the town to Pilgrims' Inn Chambers. She was in a bubble of excitement. The unorthodox little outing seemed a stupendous treat, and an immense relief from the ordinary routine of her well-regulated life. The orderly and methodical régime of her cousins' household was immensely good for her, but often a keen trial to her Celtic temperament. When she was bursting to impart some piece of information, and had run home, and begun eagerly to pour it out, Mrs. Patterson would utterly ignore her news, and interrupt her by reminding her that she had not changed her boots. Her moments of excited elation were discouraged, Joan and Kitty, indeed, thought them bad form, and the family laughed at the violent enthusiasm which she could put into the merest trifles.
"You're such a child over everything, Lesbia," Joan would remark patronizingly.
Miss Joyce at any rate did not call her "a child" for any display of enthusiasm. She "enthused" herself upon art matters, and her mental atmosphere was sympathetic. Lesbia's footsteps quickened as she turned down Mill Street and went into the cobbled courtyard of the old Pilgrims' Inn. With a delighted thrill of anticipation she skipped up the black oak staircase to the door of Miss Joyce's studio. Here her enthusiasm was checked, for the little tin board nailed below the knocker bore the unwelcome notice "Out".
Out—when she had come all that way on purpose. It was too aggravating.
"Yet it's my own silly fault for not asking her on Tuesday whether she'd be in to-day. I might have known I'd have no luck," groused Lesbia. "Well, I suppose there's nothing for it but to trot back again. It really is the limit. Hello! I believe somebody's in there after all. Unless it's ghosts."