“Oh, well, I suppose you’ll have your own way. You had better talk to mother about it.”
“I’ve learned a lot from the Ponsonby-Piggots,” Julia went on. “They don’t just trust to tea and cakes and cigarettes, and a song or two, to make them somebody. Each of those three plain girls—and that’s rather paying them a compliment—has got some special line of her own. Gwenny is engaged to the ugliest man in London, and she makes a parade of having his presentment everywhere—statuettes, photographs, pastels, miniatures, everything you can think of—to bring the man into prominence. And he hasn’t got twopence; and though he’s a gentleman, they probably won’t be able to marry for the next ten years. Theo collects Napoleon relics. Didn’t you notice that the end of their sitting-room is devoted to Napoleon?”
“Yes, I did, but I didn’t know why,” said Maudie in rather a wondering tone.
“Well, that’s why. And Stella, the little one with the curley red hair, she collects half-a-dozen things—postcards, autographs, souvenir teaspoons, and old lustre ware. These girls only have an allowance of forty pounds a year for their dresses—each, I mean,” she added hurriedly. “And if they want more they make it.”
“But how?”
“Oh, in various ways. Gwenny, I believe, is secretary to a big doctor up in town. She only has to attend from ten till five, and she gets a rousing good salary, and she’s putting it all away towards house furnishing. Then Theo, she does a bit of journalism, and Stella, well, she’s the most original of all. She’s a regular little Jew.”
“How do you mean—regular little Jew?”
“Oh, she’s always chopping and changing among her collections. She made a hundred and twenty pounds last year in selling things at a thoroughly good profit that she had picked up for nothing. If her mother would let her, she’d go into a flat with Theo and open a regular business. But Mrs. Ponsonby-Piggot says that the girls have plenty of money for their needs, and always will have.”
“Well, if so, why should they? You wouldn’t like to open a shop?”
“I’d do anything rather than stick in the mud,” said Julia, “anything in the wide world.”