Salvina resumed her Greek, but the grotesque aorists could not hold her attention. She was hungry and worn out, and even when her mother came, it would be some time before her evening meal could be prepared. She felt she must sit down, if only on her doorsteps, but their whiteness was inordinately marred as by many dirty boots—she wondered whose and why—and she had to content herself with leaning against the stucco balustrade. And gradually as the summer twilight faded, the grammar dropped in her hand, and Salvina fell a-dreaming.
What did she dream of, this Board School drudge, whose pasty face was craned curiously forward on sloping shoulders? Was it of the enchanted land of love of which Sugarman had reminded her, but over whose roses he had tramped so grossly? Alas! Sugarman himself had never thought of her as a client for any but the lottery section of his business. Within, she was one glow of eager romance, of honour, of quixotic duty, but no ray of this pierced without to give a sparkle to the eye, a colour to the cheek. No faintest dash of coquetry betrayed the yearning of the soul or gave grace to walk or gesture: her dress was merely a tidy covering. Her exquisite sensibility found bodily expression only as a clumsy shyness.
Poor Salvina!
II
At last the welcome jar and creak of the gate awoke her.
"Why, I thought you knew I had to go to the Borough!" began a fretful voice, forestalling reproach, and a buxom woman resplendent with black satin and much jewellery came up the tiny garden-path.
"It doesn't matter, mother—I haven't been waiting long."
"Well, you know how difficult it is to get a 'bus in this weather—at least if you want to sit outside, and it always makes my head ache frightfully to go inside—I'm not strong and young like you—and such a long way, I had to change at the Bank, and I made sure you'd get something to eat at one of the girls', and go straight to the People's Palace."
Still muttering, Mrs. Brill produced a key, and after some fumbling threw open the door. Both made a step within, then both stopped, aghast.
"It's the wrong house," thought Salvina confusedly, conscious of her power of making such mistakes.