And she leant forward and took her hand, and smiled so kindly and cheerfully, and said, ‘You’ll come for a day or two to our house, won’t you? My father isn’t there just now, and I’ve got it all to myself. Come till we have made up our minds about what to do next.’
This really seemed too good to be true. Sally turned scarlet. Was she saved? Saved, at the very last minute, from horror and disgrace?
‘Just for a day or two,’ said her new friend, who couldn’t take her eyes off Sally’s face, ’till your husband can find somewhere for you to live. We’ll help him to look. I’ll come with you, and help to find something. No, it doesn’t matter a bit about your not having any luggage—I can lend you everything. And we’ll write to him if you like, and tell him you can’t and won’t stay with his mother. Don’t you think this is quite the best plan? Don’t you, Sally?’
And she smiled, and asked if she might call her Sally.
‘But,’ hesitated Sally, for she didn’t want to get anybody into difficulties, ‘Father says I’m a runaway wife, and ’e wouldn’t ’arbour me ’imself because of that.’
‘Oh, but somebody must. And I’m the very one for it, because I’m so respectable, and not a wife. Don’t you worry, you lovely thing. We really must bring your Mr. Luke to his senses. By the way, hasn’t he got a Christian name?’
‘You never ’eard such a name,’ said Sally earnestly, who felt, to her own great surprise, almost as comfortable and easy with this strange lady as she had with Mr. Soper. ‘Outlandish, I call it.’
Her new friend laughed again when she told her it was Jocelyn. ‘Aren’t you delicious,’ she said, her bright eyes screwed up with laughter.
Sally liked being called delicious. It gave her assurance. Jocelyn had called her lots of things like that in his red-eared moments, but they hadn’t done her much good, because they never seemed to go on into next day. This lady was quite in her ordinary senses, her ears were proper pale ears, and what she said sounded as though it would last. And how badly Sally needed reassurance after the things Mr. Pinner had said to her that morning!
‘Now you come along with me,’ said her friend, jumping up as the train ran into Liverpool Street, her eyes, which were like little black marbles, dancing. ‘And please call me Laura, will you? Because it’s my name.’