“I heard they wanted a girl in the song department.... That’s next to where I am—I’m in the gramophone line.... You know lots about music, don’t you?”
“Oh—fair amount.”
“Well, you might get it. I’ll see what Mr. Hobbs says. Better come up with me on Tuesday morning.”
“Right, I will.... I’m pretty sure the job will suit me....”
“I daresay it will ... and you’ll learn what a lot I have to put up with. There’s heaps of pictures and theatres and things I’d like to go to up that part of the town, only I can’t because of mother. She says——”
And as Catherine listened to Amelia’s woes and began the preparations for tea, she actually started to experience in a tired, restricted kind of way a certain species of happiness! After all, the struggle was over. And the struggle had wearied her, wearied her more than she had herself realized until this very moment.... No, she reflected, as she spooned the tea out of the caddy into the teapot—no: I am not going to be very disappointed.... But she was just faintly, remotely, almost imperceptibly disappointed at not being disappointed....
CHAPTER XXII
MR. HOBBS
§ 1
A WEDNESDAY morning in June. Catherine had been in the song department for just over a month. Her work was easy and not too monotonous. It consisted in selling ballad songs, and trying them over to customers on the piano. Every day new music came from the publishers, and she had to familiarize herself with it. She was very successful at this kind of work, and was altogether happy in her position.
The stores opened at nine, but business was always slack until half-past ten or thereabouts. Mr. Hobbs, everlastingly attired in a morning coat and butterfly collar, with his hair beautifully oiled and his moustache beautifully curled, and his lips beautifully carven into an attitude of aristocratic politeness, arrived always on the stroke of nine. His first duty was to open the packages from the publishers, but before doing this he would wash his hands carefully lest the journey from South Bockley should have contaminated them. Should also the alignment of his hair-parting have been disturbed in transit he would remedy the defect with scrupulous exactitude. Then, and only then, would he exhibit himself for the delectation of the general public....