“He asked me to let him have his account monthly, as it was more convenient, and I gave in, although it’s not my rule, and I wouldn’t have that old Miss Lillicrap—you know what she is, dear, and how one can’t go against her—I wouldn’t have her hear about it for the world. Well, it was seven weeks before he paid me the first month, and I had to ask him for it again and again. He said there was some difficulty about getting his money from Greece paid into the Bank here. However, he paid in the end, but since then it’s been nothing but putting off and putting off—would I let it stand over for a week because it wasn’t convenient, and so on and so on. I told him he’d have to get his meals out if it went on, and then he gave me something on account—but not a third of what he owes me, dear. I really don’t know what to do about it. He’s so plausible, I half believe it’s all right when he’s talking to me, but I can’t afford to go on like this. He’ll have to go if he hasn’t paid in full at the end of this week. And how I’m to get the money back if he doesn’t pay up I really don’t know, for a prosecution would be a fearful business for me, and lose me every boarder in the place.”
“Oh, it would be dreadful!” cried Lydia, sincerely shocked. “But he must pay. I thought of him as quite rich.”
“So you might, from the way he goes on. And the bills that are always coming for him, too!” said Miss Nettleship.
“I can’t help seeing them, you know, when I clear the box in the mornings. However, he says there’s money coming to him from Greece, and it’s only got to be put into his Bank over here, and he can promise me a cheque on Saturday at latest. So I’m not saying any more till then, but after that my mind’s made up. But you’ll understand, dear, why I felt I had to speak to you about it first.”
Lydia felt that she understood only too well, and she went to business next morning in so thoughtful a mood that Rosie Graham, whose observation nothing escaped, made sharp inquiry of her as they snatched a ten minutes’ tea-interval in the afternoon: “What’s up that you’re going about with a face as long as a fiddle?”
In the midst of her perfectly real preoccupation, it was not in Lydia to fail to perceive her opportunity for at last arousing a tardy interest in Miss Graham.
“I’m worried,” she said frankly.
“Worry won’t mend matters,” quoted Rosie tritely, but Lydia reaped the advantage of her invariable abstention from the airing of daily minor grievances such as the other girls brought to their work, in the instant acceptance of her statement shown by the astute little Cockney.
“Come round to my place for a yarn this evening,” she suggested. “My pal’s out and I can find some food, I daresay, though it won’t be seven courses and a powdered footman behind the chair, like that place of yours.”
Lydia accepted, and felt flattered. No one else had ever been asked to Rosie’s place.