He called a taxi accordingly and installed Toni therein; and he stood back to watch her gliding away from him in the mellow September sunshine, before he hurried to the office where Barry was impatiently awaiting his arrival.
Toni found several members of the Gibbs family at home when at length she reached her destination.
Being Thursday, Fanny was enjoying her weekly holiday, and was delighted to see Toni; more especially because she had a piece of news to confide which appealed strongly to Fanny's romantic nature.
When the first greetings were over, and Mrs. Gibbs had retired with the hospitable intention of "putting on the kettle," Fanny beckoned mysteriously to Toni to mount the narrow stairs leading to the room the girls had formerly shared in common.
Toni mounted obediently; and for a second she forgot to wonder what Miss Gibbs' extraordinary signals might imply, for a sudden feeling of gratitude to Owen for having lifted her out of this dingy atmosphere flooded her impressionable nature.
Surely when she too had slept beneath this low ceiling the room had not been quite so small, so stuffy. The wall-paper was the one she and Fanny had themselves chosen years ago, but it was oddly faded and dirty now, and in one corner a great piece had peeled off, hanging in strips and disclosing the plaster behind. The common furniture, too—the rickety deal dressing-table, the broken chair, the unpainted iron bedsteads—thinking of her own airy, spacious, bedroom with its shining toilet-table, its linen bedspread, its big windows opening on to a view of the river and the fields beyond, Toni wondered how she had ever endured life in these sordid, depressing surroundings.
Luckily Fanny was too full of her news to notice Toni's involuntary shudder as she looked round the close little bedroom; and barely waiting to shut the door she blurted out her tidings.
"Toni, you remember Lennie Dowson—the fellow who was sweet on you?"
Toni nodded casually, her eyes still roaming round her, and Fanny felt vaguely disappointed that the subject was so evidently uninteresting.
"Well, he's going to Sutton, three miles from Willowhurst, and I truly believe it's because he wants to be near you!"