“Yes, aren’t they? Look, I’m going to put this collar on my Sunday serge. That ought to smarten it up a bit.”
She pinned the cheap lace round the low-cut V at the neck of an old navy-blue dress, and fastened it with a blue-stoned brooch in the shape of a circle. Her throat rose up, fresh and warm and youthful, from the new adornment.
“Isn’t it time I put my hair up, don’t you think?”
“No. You’re only a kid. I didn’t put mine up till I was eighteen. Mother wouldn’t let me.”
Elsie dragged a thick grey pilot-cloth coat from behind the curtain of faded red rep that hung across a row of pegs and constituted the sisters’ wardrobe, caught up the black tam-o’-shanter again and ran downstairs.
All the time that she was laying the table in the dining-room, which was next to the kitchen on the ground floor, Elsie hummed to herself.
The tablecloth was stained in several places, and she arranged the Britannia-metal forks and spoons, the coarse, heavy plates and the red glass water-jug so as to cover the spots as much as possible. In the middle of the table stood a thick fluted green glass with paper chrysanthemums in it.
Elsie added the cruet, two half-loaves of bread on a wooden platter with “Bread” carved upon it in raised letters, and put a small red glass beside each plate. Finally she quickly pleated half a dozen coloured squares of Japanese paper, and stuck one into each glass.
“Mother!” she called.
“What?” said Mrs. Palmer from the kitchen.