“Cutting out in the kitchen.”
“Tell her to come along up. She knows your aunties are here.”
“I told her to come, and she made use of a very vulgar expression,” Geraldine spitefully declared.
“I don’t know what’s come over Elsie, I’m sure,” Mrs. Palmer declared helplessly. “She’s learnt all these low tricks and manners from that friend of hers, that Ireen Tidmarsh.”
Mrs. Palmer was very angry with Irene for her revelations, although she was secretly rather enjoying her younger daughter’s notoriety.
“Get that naughty gurl up from the kitchen directly,” she commanded Geraldine. “No—wait a minute, I’ll go myself.”
With extraordinary agility she heaved her considerable bulk out of her low chair and left the room.
“And what have you been doing with yourself lately?” Aunt Gertie enquired of Geraldine.
She was stout and elderly-looking, with a mouth over-crowded by large teeth. She was older than Mrs. Palmer, and Aunt Ada was some years younger than either, and wore, with a sort of permanent smirk, the remains of an ash-blond prettiness. They were just able, in 1913, to live in the house at Wimbledon that their father had left them, on their joint income.
“There’s always heaps to do in the house, I’m sure, Aunt Gertie,” said Geraldine vaguely. “And I’m not strong enough to go to work anywhere, really I’m not. Now Elsie’s different. She could do quite well in the shorthand-typing, but she’s bone idle—that’s what she is. Or there’s dressmaking—Elsie’s clever with her needle, that I will say for her.”