Walter opened the window, the cold night air blew in and with it came from the street the strains of “Lead Kindly Light,” sung in a fresh girlish voice.
Fires are fires in Staithley, as Tom was in the habit of telling Londoners who put coal by the dainty shovelful into a doll’s house grate, and if he was commanded to shut up he could do it, but the open window was a persecution. There was a silent pantomime of two elderly gentlemen one of whom struggled to close a window, the other to keep it open, then Tom turned to the defeated Walter with a “What the hangment’s come over you?”
“Have you no soul at all, Tom? Couldn’t you hear her?”
“I heard a street-singer.”
“You heard a class voice, and you’re going to hear it again.” Mr. Pate was at the window.
“Then bring her in,” said Tom. “I’ll freeze for no fad of yours. A class voice in Staithley streets!”
“A capacity to play chess is a limiting thing,” was fired at him as Mr. Pate left the room. Tom took an amicable revenge by emptying both glasses of beer. “I’ve cubic capacity, choose how,” he said, indicating their emptiness as Walter returned with the girl who had been singing.
“Get warm,” said Walter to her. “Then we’ll have a look at you.”
She had, clearly, the habit of taking things as they came, and went to the fire with as little outward emotion as she had shown when Walter pounced upon her in the street. She accepted warmth, this strange, queerly luxurious room, these two men in it, as she would have accepted the blow which Walter’s upraised hand and voice had seemed to presage in the street—with a fatalism full of pitiable implications.
She was of any age, beyond first childhood, that went with flat-chested immaturity; she was dirty beyond reason, but she had beauty that shone through her gamin disorder like the moon through storm-tossed cloud. Her tangled hair was dark auburn, her eyes were hazel and as the fire’s heat soaked into her a warm flush spread over her pinched face like sunshine after rain on ripening corn.