"We haven't got it yet."
"You'll pay me soon? I shall have to let the room if you don't. Letting's all I have to depend on, you know. By the way, I ought to have told you, it'll be seventeen and six a week now instead of fifteen. The rents of these houses have gone up."
"Since I drove here in a car," snapped Maggy. "We'll pay you and clear."
"No, don't do that, dearie. Can't you just give me a bit on account?"
Maggy opened her purse and held it upside down. She had given threepence to Woolf's woman, and the remaining threepence to the chauffeur. They had despised the coppers, naturally, and barely thanked her. They would not have thanked her at all but for the possibility that they might see her again under more affluent circumstances.
"Something'll happen soon," said the woman, thinking of the car. "I'll treat you kind because I've a kind 'eart."
She stood away from the door to let Alexandra, who had come up, pass into the room. Maggy looked up quickly. Something was wrong. She saw it at once.
"So I'll let it stand over," went on Mrs. Bell. "The bill," she explained to Alexandra. "It seems as it's not convenient for you to pay it yet. It's disappointing, but I suppose—"
"How much is it?" asked Alexandra in a dispirited voice.
"Two pounds—five altogether with last week's bill."