"It's cold, I think. Is your mother well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Give her my love."
"I will, Mrs. Sampson."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
Mrs. Sampson's nose, that would take on a blue colour on a cold day, quivered, her thin mouth shut with a snap, and she was gone.
"But I wasn't afraid of her!" She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the steps into the Circulating Library.
It was the custom in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a Snob of the Snobs, and thanked God on her knees every night for Lady St. Leath, Mrs. Combermere and Mrs. Sampson, by whose graces she was left in her present position.
Joan was still too near childhood to be considered very seriously, and it was well known that her father did not take her very seriously either. She was always, therefore, on the rare occasions when she entered the Library, snubbed by Miss Milton. It must be confessed that to-day, in spite of her success with Mrs. Sampson, she was nervous. She was nervous partly because she hated Miss Milton's red-rimmed eyes, and never looked at them if she could help it, but, in the main, because she knew that her mother was returning the Library books too quickly, and had, moreover, insisted that she should ask for Mr. Barrie's Sentimental Tommy and Mr. Seton Merriman's The Sowers, both of them books that had been asked for for weeks and as steadily and persistently refused.