Millie soon recovered her very best spirits, and was not in the least offended when a seedy young man stared at her from an opposite seat and wetted his lips with his tongue as though he were tasting something very good indeed.
She had, however, to summon all her spirits to her aid when Cromwell Road encompassed her. Rows and rows of houses all the same, wearing the air, with their white steps, their polished door-handles and the ferns in the window, of a middle-aged business man dressed for church on a Sunday morning. They were smug and without personality. They were thinking about nothing but themselves. No. 85 was as smug as the others.
She rang the bell, and soon a small boy dressed in a blue uniform and brass buttons stared at her and appeared to be incapable of understanding a word that she said.
He stared at her with such astonishment that she was able to push past him into the hall before he could prevent her.
"You can't see Miss 'Toria," he was heard at last to say in a hoarse voice. "She don't see any one before she's up."
"I think she'll see me," said Millie quietly. "She's expecting me."
He continued to stare, and she suggested that he should go and inquire of somebody else. He was away for so long a time that she was able to observe how full the hall was of furniture, and how strangely confused that furniture was. Near the hall-door was a large Jacobean oak chest carved with initials and an old date 1678, and next to this a rickety bamboo table; there were Chippendale chairs and a large brass gong, and beyond these a glass case with stuffed birds. Millie, whose fingers were always itching to arrange things in her own way, could see at once that this might be made into a very jolly house. From the window at the stair-corner came floods of sunlight, she could hear cheerful voices from the kitchen; the house was alive even though it were in a mess. . . .
A tall dark woman in very stiff cap and apron appeared; she "overlooked" Millie scornfully, and then said in a voice aloof and distant that Miss Platt would see Miss Trenchard upstairs.
Millie followed the woman and, receiving the same impression of light and confusion as she went up, reached the third floor and was led into a room on the right of the stairs.
Here the sun was pouring in, and for a moment it was difficult to see, then through the sunlight certain things declared themselves: item an enormous, four-poster bed hung with bright curtains, item a whole row of long becking and bowing looking-glasses, item many open drawers sprayed with garments of every kind, item Miss Victoria Platt rising, like Venus from the sea, out of the billowy foam of scattered underclothing, resplendent in a Japanese kimono and pins falling out of her hair. The tall woman said sharply, "Miss Trenchard, miss," and withdrew. Miss Platt, red-faced and smiling, her naked arms like crimson rolling-pins, turned towards her.