Lydia saw that the kind woman was waiting to accompany her downstairs to the dining-room, but she had every intention of making her entrance unescorted.
“I’m not quite ready,” she said coolly. “Please don’t wait—I know you want to be downstairs.”
The manageress looked bewildered, and as though she felt herself to have been rebuffed, but she spoke in her usual rather incoherently good-natured fashion as she hastened down the stairs.
“Just whatever you like, and it’ll be quite all right. I quite understand. I wish I could wait, dear, but really I daren’t....”
Lydia was very glad that Miss Nettleship dared not wait.
She herself remained upstairs for another full five minutes, although her remaining preparations were easily completed in one.
At the end of the five minutes she felt sure that all the boarders must be assembled. Hardly anyone was ever late for a meal, since meals for most of the women, at any rate, contributed the principal variety in the day’s occupation.
Nevertheless, Lydia went downstairs very slowly, until the sound of clattering plates and dishes, broken by occasional outbreaks of conversation, told her that dinner was in progress.
Then she quickly opened the dining-room door.
They were all there, and they all looked up as she came in.