“Won’t you come up, Miss Henderson? I’m at work up here.”
She had forgotten the man and the third room. At this moment, in order not to go up, she would have sacrificed the possession of the third room. On her way out she glanced at the ceiling. It was painted. Floating draped figures, garlanded, in dull crimsons, faded rose and blue and gold, dim with grime, set within a moulding shaped to fill the angles of the square and filmed to a yellowish brown.
“This is a nice room.”
The man, a good deal altered by a large white apron, was standing behind his buckets.
“My name’s Sheffield. I told Miss Holland. Perhaps she didn’t tell you?”
The room stated itself, competing with the voice. It was high and airy, its ceiling sloping on all four sides; in the front to a deep lattice, having a wide shelf underneath.
“She’s a very nice lady. Nice quiet lady. There’s not so many about nowadays.”
It was all coming back; the attitude towards life that had so tormented her when she listened unaided by thought. She knew now that it was blasphemy. It is blasphemy, she could say, if this man were equally armed, blasphemy to imagine that each next generation is plunging into an abyss.
“People don’t keep themselves to themselves like they did. There’s too much running about. Don’t you think so, Miss Henderson?”
She was looking out upon the rain-washed parapet a yard away from the window. ‘Nice to have a parrypidge in case of fire; plenty of roofs and chimley-pots to walk on.’