"No, thank you, ducky," she said. "I always live alone nowadays. You see, I've got my own little peculiarities. Besides, when my best boy comes down to see me he likes to see me alone. When I was with the 'Geisha' crowd last year I obliged one of the girls by sharing rooms with her in Middlesbrough, and as luck would have it George selected Middlesbrough to pay me a little visit. He was really very aggravated indeed, and he said to me, 'Fay,' he said, 'whatever's the use of me coming all the way up to Middlesbrough if I can't ever see you?' So I had to tell the other girl—Lexie Sharp her name was—that the arrangement didn't work, and what do you think she did? Well, if you'll believe me, she went about telling everybody that I was jealous of her over George! Luckily for me she was a girl who was very well known for her tongue and nobody paid any attention to her; still, it was uncomfortable for me, though I deserved it for breaking one of my rules. Who knows? George may come up to Birmingham. It's just the sort of place he would select for a visit, because, being a London fellow, he feels out of it in too small a town. Of course, he has nothing to do with the stage himself. Oh dear me, no, nothing whatever! He lives at Tulse Hill with two aunts, one of which has a growth in the throat and may go off at any moment, which prevents George working, as she's so particular about having him always close at hand. Well, any one ought to understand an aunt's feelings—I'm sure I can—but some of the girls last year used to criticize him something dreadful behind my back, until really I was glad to say good-by to them all. But this seems a much nicer crowd we're in now."
"We've only been in it a fortnight," said Miss Scarlett from the other corner of the carriage.
Dorothy looked at the speaker curiously. She was a girl who had joined the company for the last three rehearsals and during this first fortnight in Manchester had kept herself apart. Lily had spoken to her once or twice, but Dorothy, who was afraid there might be an unpleasant reason for such deliberate seclusion, had begged Lily not to be in too great a hurry to make friends with her. During Onzie's monologue Miss Scarlett had apparently been unconscious of what was happening in the compartment, and from the corner opposite Lily she had been staring out at the landscape, that was scarred and grimed and misshapen by industry like the hands of the toilers who lived in it. She was different from all the other girls, Dorothy was thinking—rather foreign-looking with her deep, brown, slanted eyes and mass of untidy brown hair, her wide nose, high cheek-bones, and distinctly ugly mouth, the underlip of which only just escaped protruding. She was dressed, too, in a style that was quite unlike that of anybody else and without any regard for the prevailing fashion. Dorothy remembered with a flickering smile that when she had first seen her at rehearsals she had thought she was one of the Hungarian artistes who had come to see why her club-room was being used by a theatrical company. Now when in a deep voice she suddenly turned round and commented on Fay Onslow's last remark Dorothy was astonished to hear that she spoke the same kind of English as herself; she indeed, in her surprise, almost gave utterance aloud to her thought that this gipsy creature was a lady.
"Hell! I've left my cigarettes behind," the lady ejaculated.
"There now, what a nuisance for you!" said the good-natured Onzie. "Have one of mine, dear."
"Which are they? Turks or Virgins?" asked Miss Scarlett, leaning over and screwing up her eyes to see what Onzie was offering.
Dorothy corrected her opinion and decided that Miss Scarlett had been a lady once upon a time; yet even while she was condemning her vulgarity she was thinking that her ladyhood was not so far away in the past. Her speech and manner had the assurance of age, but she could not be much more than twenty-two or twenty-three, perhaps not even so much as that.
Presently the train stopped for a dreary Sunday wait, and while some of the gentlemen of the company, with a view to future favors, were scuttling about the platform in search of tea for the ladies from whom they would demand them, Dorothy took this opportunity of asking Lily what she thought about inviting Sylvia Scarlett to share their rooms at Birmingham.
"She seems quite different from the other girls," Dorothy explained. "I mean, she talked as if she was a lady. Don't you think so? And really, you know, we can't afford these rooms unless we do get a third person."
Lily was quite ready to accept Miss Scarlett's company, though, as Dorothy thought impatiently, she would have been equally willing to accept the dresser's, if Dorothy had thought of inviting the dresser to share rooms with them.