Day by day she grew paler, and the high cheek-bones had shadows beneath them that might easily turn into hollows. She had not regained flesh much, and a little of her buoyancy was gone. What she needed was to sit in the air and sunshine all day playing with her baby's dimples. Dank Westminster, built on a swamp, low-lying and foggy, when all the rest of London was clear, was no place for her or for her baby; but she did not know it, and had no time to find out, so wrapt was she in the business of making money that would assure home and life for her child and herself.
The days were all too short, and soon the midnight-oil began to burn. Thereafter, shadows really did change gradually into hollows—very soft hollows, however. Still, her eyes were always blue and brave. Mrs. Print used to observe her disapprovingly and tell her that she should take a leaf out of the book of the lydy upstairs, who lay on the sofa all day reading novels.
"Miss Never-Sweat—that's what I calls her!" she said, contemptuously dismissing thus an anæmic blonde damsel on the first floor, who mysteriously did nothing except take a fat poodle for half an hour's walk every day. Mrs. Print's attitude towards this graceful dilettante was one of resentful suspicion—resentful because she did nothing: suspicious for the same reason!
"With everybody helse in this 'ouse, including you, Mrs. Chard, it is
"'Come day, go day,
Please, God, send Sunday.'
"But all days looks the same to 'er," she remarked, as she diligently polished the fire-irons in Poppy's sitting-room. The latter, intensely bored, knew that it was no use trying to divert Mrs. Print from the subject until it was exhausted; then, mayhap, she would depart.
"When I went up to do 'er fire this morning, she says to me, she says" (here Mrs. Print pitched her voice high and fell into a drawl), "'Oh, Mrs. Print, dear, I do feel so hill this morning. I've got pains in my 'ead and chest, and I can't henjoy my food at all. And my nerves is quite rore.' I gives one look at her yeller skin, and I says: 'Why, you've got the boil, that's what you've got, for want of getting about on your two pins. Wot you want to do is to go to the chimist's round the corner, and arst him for a pennorth of ikery-pikery. When you've took that, come back 'ome and turn out these two rooms of yours and cook your dinner—' She give me a look like a mad hyhena, and slabbed the door."
"Now, Mrs. Print," said her listener wearily, "do make haste and finish that fender. I want to work while baby is asleep."
"Yes ma'am, I shan't be another minit. I must just give the 'earth a brush up, 'a dirty 'earth makes dinner late,' and that's what mine'll be to-day, same as breakfast was, and Old George gone off in a dandy because he was late."
She always spoke of her husband as Old George, her children as our Jack and my Jimmy.