“No good offering you any, I suppose?”
“Don’t talk of such a thing. Elsie, I can’t come down to supper to-night. Do be a dear and bring me up a cup of tea—nice and strong. I’ve got a sort of craving for hot tea when I’m like this, really I have.”
“You don’t want much, do you, asking me to carry tea up four flights of stairs? I’ll see what I can do.” Elsie began to hum, in a small, rather tuneful little voice. She let her skirt fall round her feet as she sang and pulled off her blouse, revealing beautifully modelled breasts and shoulders. Her arms were a little too short, but the line from breast-bone to knee was unusually good, the legs plump and shapely, with slender ankles and the instep well arched. She wore serge knickerbockers and a flimsy under-bodice of yellow cotton voile over a thick cotton chemise.
“Are you going out again?” asked Geraldine in a vexed, feeble voice.
“I may go round and sit with Ireen for a bit, after supper. I think she wants to go to the pictures, or something.”
“How’s Mr. Tidmarsh?”
“Going to die, I should think, by all accounts,” glibly replied Elsie, although as a matter of fact she had forgotten to make any enquiry for Irene’s father, who had for months past been dying from some obscure and painful internal growth.
“Why doesn’t he go to a hospital?”
“Don’t ask me. Ireen’s always begging him to, but he won’t.”
“Old people are awfully selfish, I think,” said Geraldine thoughtfully.