He stood up briskly. “Well, young man, we must go out and get you some clothes and things. What’s called a school outfit. We’ll have to go in that motor-car again. Quickest way. Get your hat. But you haven’t got a hat.”
“Me come too,” said Joan.
“No. You can’t come to a tailor’s, and that’s where we’re going. Little girls can’t come to tailors, you know,” said Mr. Grimes.
Peter thought privately that Mr. Grimes was just the sort of beast who would take you to a tailor’s. Well, he would stick it out. This couldn’t go on for ever. He allowed himself to be guided by Mr. Grimes to the door. He restrained an impulse to ask to be allowed to sit beside the driver. One doesn’t ask favours of beasts like Grimes.
Joan went to the window to watch the car and Mr. Grimes’ proceedings mistrustfully.
“I got a nice picture-book for you to look at,” said Mrs. Pybus, coming behind her. “Don’t go standing and staring out of the window, dearie. It’s an idle thing to stare out of windows.”
Joan had an unpleasant feeling that she had to comply with this. Under the initiative of Mrs. Pybus she sat up to the table and permitted a large book to be opened in front of her, feigning attention. She kept her eye as much as possible on the window. She was aware of Peter getting into the car with Mr. Grimes. There was a sudden buzzing of machinery, the slam of a door, and the automobile moved and vanished.
She gave a divided attention to the picture-book before her, which was really not properly a picture-book at all but an old bound volume of the Illustrated London News full of wood engravings of royal processions and suchlike desiccated matter. It was a dusty, frowsty volume, damp-stained at the edges. She tried to be amused. But it was very grey and dull, and she felt strangely uneasy. Every few minutes she would look up expecting to see the car back outside, but it did not return....
She heard the red-haired young man in the passage saying he thought he’d have to be getting round to the railway-station, and there was some point explained by Mrs. Pybus at great length and over and over again about the difference between the Great Western and the South Western Railway. The front door slammed after him at last, and Mrs. Pybus was audible returning to her kitchen.
Presently she came and looked at Joan with a thin, unreal smile on her white face.