They took a Sloane Street omnibus at six o’clock, and got out at Sloane Square, where Lydia made use of a public telephone to inform Miss Nettleship that she would not be in to supper, and then Rosie led her through a very large square, a mews, and into a little street called Walton Street. They crossed it, and entered Ovington Street.
“Number ninety-one A,” said Miss Graham, producing a latch-key.
She took Lydia to the top of the house, and Lydia was astounded at the lightness and airiness of the fair-sized room, with a much smaller one opening out of it, evidently in use as a dressing-room.
“Not so dusty, is it?” Rosie said complacently. “This sofa turns into a bed, and there’s another proper bed in the other room. The whole thing—unfurnished—costs us twenty-two and six a week, and includes everything except the use of the gas. There’s a penny-in-the-slot machine for that. We do most of our cooking on the gas-ring, but the landlady’s very decent about sometimes letting us use the kitchen fire.”
She gave Lydia a supper of sausage-rolls, bread-and-butter, cocoa and a variety of sweet cakes and biscuits, and all the time talked more agreeably and less caustically than Lydia had ever heard her talk before.
When the little meal was over and the table pushed out of the way, Rosie made Lydia draw her chair close to the tiny oil-stove.
“There’s a gas-fire,” she said frankly, “but we don’t use it unless the weather’s simply perishing. It’s rather an expensive luxury. Sure you’re all right like that?”
“Yes, thank you. What a lot of heat this thing gives out!”
“Doesn’t it? Well, now,” said Miss Graham abruptly, “spit it out. What’s all the trouble? Is it anything to do with that foreign freak who stands about waiting for you outside Elena’s of an evening sometimes?”
Lydia was too well inured to the shop-girl vocabulary to resent this description of her admirer.