“I’m glad she gave me your address,” finished Miss Dear a little furrow running along her brow in control of the dimpling flushed oval below it. “I’ll say au revoir and not good bye for the present.”
“Good bye,” flung Miriam stiffly at the departing face. Shutting the neglected door she hurried back through the hall and resumed her consciousness of Wimpole Street with angry, eager swiftness.... Eve, getting mixed up with people ... it is right ... she would not have been angry if I had asked her to be nice to somebody.... I did not mean to do anything ... I was proud of having the tickets to send ... if I had not sent them I should have had the thought of all those nurses, longing for something to do between cases. They are just the people for the Students Concerts ... if she comes again.... “I can’t have social life, unfortunately,” how furious I shall feel saying that “you see I’m so fearfully full up—lectures every night and I’m away every week end ... and I’m not supposed to see people here——”
CHAPTER XXIX
1
Miriam had no choice but to settle herself on the cane-seated chair. When Miss Dear had drawn the four drab coloured curtains into place the small cubicle was in semi-darkness.
“I hope the next time you come to tea with me it will be under rather more comfortable circumstances.”
“This is all right,” said Miriam in abstracted impatient continuation of her abounding manner. Miss Dear was arranging herself on the bed as if for a long sitting. The small matter of business would come now. Having had tea it would be impossible to depart the moment the discussion was over. How much did the tea cost here? That basement tea-room, those excited young women and middle-aged women watchful and stealthy and ugly with poverty and shifts, those tea-pots and shabby trays and thick bread and butter were like the Y.W.C.A. public restaurant at the other end of the street—fourpence at the outside; but Miss Dear would have to pay it. She felt trapped ... “a few moments of your time to advise me” and now half the summer twilight had gone and she was pinned in this prison face to face with anything Miss Dear might choose to present; forced by the presences audible in the other cubicles to a continuation of her triumphant tea-room manner.
“You must excuse my dolly.” She arranged her skirt neatly about the ankle of the slippered bandaged foot.
Anyone else would say what is the matter with your foot.... It stuck out, a dreadfully padded mass, dark in the darkness of the dreadful little enclosure in the dreadful dark hive of women, collected together only by poverty.
“Have you left your association?”