"I shall buy you a bottle of port wine," said Mavis.
"What say?"
Mavis repeated her words.
"Oh, I say! Fancy me 'avin' port wine! I once 'ad a glass; it did make me feel 'appy."
Two days later, in accordance with the contents of a letter she had received from Mrs Farthing, Mavis met the train at Paddington that was to bring her dear Jill from Melkbridge. She discovered her friend huddled in a corner of the guard's van; her grief was piteous to behold, her eyes being full of tears, which the kindly attentions of the guard had not dissipated. Directly she saw her mistress, Jill uttered a cry that was almost human in its gladness, and tried to jump into Mavis' arms.
When Jill was released, Mavis hugged her in her arms, careless of the attention her devotion attracted.
With her friend restored to her, that evening was the happiest she had spent for some time.
For many succeeding weeks, Mavis passed her mornings with Jill, or Miss Nippett, or both; and most of her afternoons and all of her evenings at the academy. The long hours, together with the monotonous nature of the work, greatly taxed her energies, lessened as these were by the physical stress through which she was passing.
She obtained infrequent distraction from the peculiarities of the pupils. One, in particular, who was a fat Jewess, named Miss Hyman, greatly amused her. This person was desperately anxious to learn waltzing, but was handicapped by bandy legs. As she spun round and round the room with Mr Poulter, or any other partner, she would close her eyes and continually repeat aloud, "One, two, three; one, two, three," the while her feet kept step with the music.
Otherwise, her days were mostly drab-coloured, the only thing that at all kept up her spirits being her untiring faith in Perigal—a faith which, in time, became a mechanical action of mind. Strive as she might to quell rebellious thoughts, now and again she would rage soul and body at the web that fate, or Providence, had spun about her life. At these times, it hurt her to the quick to think that, instead of being the wife she deserved to be, she was in her present unprotected condition, with all its infinite possibilities of disaster. Again and again the thought would recur to her that she might have been Windebank's wife at any time that she had cared to encourage his overtures, and if she were desirable as a wife in his eyes, why not in Charlie Perigal's! Gregarious instincts ran in her blood. For all her frequent love of solitude, there were days when her soul ached for the companionship of her own social kind. This not being forthcoming-indeed (despite her faith in Perigal) there being little prospect of it—she avoided as much as possible the sight of, or physical contact with, those prosperous ones whom she knew to be, in some cases, her equals; in most, her social inferiors.