For months she had dreaded going to sleep in anticipation of the frightful, sick pang that waking, with its renewal of realization, brought her.
Uncle Alfred had been extraordinarily and unexpectedly kind.
He had given her pocket-money, and occasional presents, and had said nothing about the innumerable novels from the circulating library with which she had sought to drug her misery, although he had long ago denounced all fiction as “trash inspired by the Devil.” (Uncle Alfred had “found religion” some years earlier but had never succeeded in imparting the discovery either to his sister-in-law or to his niece.)
It had been, however, without any such altruistic design at all that Uncle Alfred had accidentally provided Rose with the first real distraction from her sorrow.
He had engaged an assistant.
The youth, who helped in the shop all day and slept under the counter at night, and had meals with them in the living-room, fell in love with Rose.
Immediately, and with no false modesty as to showing it, Rose had fallen in love with Artie Millar in return.
It had been a very young, rapid and essentially physical affair, but it had served, to a certain extent, to reveal to Rose the possibilities in herself. She had been partly frightened, and partly exultant. At school she had acquired a garbled knowledge of sex, supplemented by her mother’s crudely worded reassurance.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head, my poppet. It stands to reason you’ve got a body as well as a heart, doesn’t it? And if you ask me, the one wouldn’t be much fun without the other. You’ll find the whole thing sort of works in together, when you fall in love, and nothing to be ashamed of either. It’s all Nature.”
It had been with this comfortable justification at the back of her mind that Rose had let herself go whole-heartedly to the violent mutual attraction that had overtaken herself and the good-looking assistant—a lad of nineteen, with blue eyes and very white teeth flashing from a singularly brown face. He had been at sea for two years before drifting into the pawnbroker’s shop, and the fact held a fascination for the London-bred Rose.