It was seven o'clock in the evening and though dusk was at hand there was still enough light to sew by. The flat, moreover, was on the west side of the building and caught the last rays of the sun as he sank to rest behind the quivering vapours of London.
Last week in August as it was, the heat which hung over the metropolis for so long was in no way abated. All the oxygen was gone from the air, and for those who must stay in London—the workers, who could only read in the papers of translucent sunlit seas in Cornwall where one bathed from the beaches all day long; of bright northern moors where dew fell upon the heather at dawn—life was become stifling and hard.
In the window hung a bird-cage and the canary within it—the pet of these two lonely maidens—drooped upon its perch. It was known as "The Lulu Bird" and was a recurring incident in their lives.
Ethel was six and twenty, short, undistinguished of feature and with sandy hair. She was the daughter of a very poor clergyman in Lancashire, and she was the principal typist in the busy office of a firm of solicitors in the city. She had ever so many certificates for shorthand, was a quick and accurate machine-writer, understood the routine of an office in all its details, and was invaluable to her employers. They boasted of her, indeed, trusted her in every way, worked her from nine to six on normal days, to any hours of the night at times of pressure, and paid her the highest salary in the market.
That is to say, that this girl was at the very top of her profession and received two pounds ten shillings a week. Dozens of girls envied her, she was more highly paid than most of the men clerks in the city. She knew herself to be a very fortunate girl. She gave high technical ability, a good intelligence, unceasing, unwearying and most loyal service for fifty shillings a week.
Each year she had a holiday of fourteen days, when she clubbed with some other girls and they all went to some farmhouse in the country, or even for a cheap excursion abroad, with everything calculated to the last shilling. This girl did all this, dressed like a lady, had a little home of her own with Rita, preserved her dignity and independence, and sent many a small postal order to help the poor curate's wife, her mother, with the hungry brood of younger ones. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison in Lancashire spoke of their eldest daughter with pride. She had "her flat in town." She was "doing extraordinarily well"; "Sister Ethel" was a fairy godmother to her little brothers and sisters.
She was a good girl, good and happy. The graces were denied her; she had made all sweet virtues her own. No man wooed her, no man looked twice at her. She had no religious ecstasies, and—instead of a theatre where one had to pay—asked no thrills from sensuous ceremonial. She simply went to the nearest church and said her prayers.
It is the shame of most of us that when we meet such women as these, we pass them by with a kindly laugh or a patronising word. Men and women of the world prefer more decorative folk. They like to watch holiness in a picturesque setting, Elizabeth of Hungary washing the beggar's feet upon the palace steps. . . .
A little worker-bee saint, making a milk pudding for a sick washerwoman on a gas-stove in a flat—that comes rather too close home, does it not?
The light was really fading now, and Ethel put down her sewing, rose from her basket-work chair, and lit the gas.