If what she saw were the result of a sick brain, it was a convincing, consistent picture which fascinated her attention.
The woman had taken up a not over-clean towel, to dip a corner of it in a jug upon the washstand before applying it to one side of her face. Mavis suffered her eyes to leave the woman in order to wander round the room. She was lying on a sofa at the foot of an iron bed. That part of the wall nearest to her was filled by the fireplace, in which a cheerful fire was burning; it looked as if it had recently been made up. Upon the mantelshelf were faded photographs of common, self-conscious people, the tops of which all but touched a framed print of the late Mr Gladstone. In the complementary recess to the one in which the washstand stood, was a table littered with odds and ends of food, some of which were still wrapped in the paper in which they had come from the shop. A smoking oil lamp, of which the glass shade had disappeared, and which was now shaded with the lid of a cardboard shoe box, cast elongated shadows of the occupier of the room on walls and ceiling as she moved. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with the mingled smell of paraffin oil and fugginess.
"Where—where am I?" asked Mavis.
"You've come round, then?" said the woman, who had just cleansed one side of her face of artificial complexion.
"How did I get here?"
"I found you outside as I came 'ome. I couldn't very well leave you like that."
"You're very kind."
"'Elp that you may be 'elped is my motto. An' then you didn't smell of drink. I wouldn't 'ave took you in if you had. Girls who're 'on the game' who drink ought to know better, and don't deserve sympathy."
Mavis stared at her wide-eyed, striving to recalled where she had heard that expression before, also what it meant.
"You sit quiet, dear; you'll be better directly," said the woman. "I've got to wash this stuff off. Beastly nuisance, but, if you don't, it stains the sheets and pillers, as I daresay you know."