"Thank you, madam. Will you approach the bishop or shall I see the vicar about it?"
"You'd better do it yourself. As a churchwarden you've a perfect right to tackle a bishop. And anyway I'm sure the vicar won't, though he ought to after the way you've folded his trousers for him and stropped his razor. All I ask is that if you have a committee meeting of your patrons——"
"There will not, I imagine, madam, be any necessity for that."
"Well, if there is," said Mrs. Eames, "you may take the chair at it yourself, for I won't."
Chapter VIII
Although Battersea is far from being a fashionable part of London there are pleasant little flats to be had there, overlooking the park, for those who are indifferent to the advantages of a smart address.
One of these is shared by Beth Appleby and her friend Mary Lambert. Beth Appleby makes an unsatisfying income by casual journalism, relying chiefly on the small but regular payments made by a syndicating agency for a weekly letter on London life. This is widely circulated in provincial papers. Miss Lambert dances fairly well and sings badly. She obtains engagements of uncertain duration in revues and musical comedies. There are times when she envies the steady weekly income paid to her friend by the syndicators. There are other times when Beth Appleby thinks that dancing is a better way of earning a living than writing. Pens may be mightier than swords, but legs are often more profitable than either.
The two girls were together in their flat one sunny morning at the end of May, just such a morning as makes young people long for pleasure and makes work of every kind extremely irksome, and, for most of us—though the thing seems self-contradictory—the want of work more irksome still.
Beth was at her writing-table, her pen in her hand, a sheet of paper in front of her. She had written the words "Lilith lisps" and then come to a dead stop. This was not surprising. Lilith had already lisped four times since breakfast. Beth lacked matter for a fifth and, like Rosalind's orator in a similar case, felt strongly inclined to spit.
Mary lay back in the most comfortable chair in the room with her feet on another. She had a cigarette between her fingers which she put to her lips occasionally but without much satisfaction. She was meditating disconsolately on the failure of the last show in which she had danced, a disaster which brought her face to face with the difficult task of getting another engagement.