“My little girl,” said Miss Mason promptly. “At least, she came to me out of the Nowhere last December, and now she’s mine.”
“A Christmas gift,” said Bridget.
Miss Mason nodded. “I like to hear you say that,” she said. “I gave Pippa her first Christmas tree. It was my first for the matter of that.”
And then they fell to talking about Pippa and Stella, after the fashion of women who love children, each capping the other with a new anecdote. But after a time Miss Mason was left to do most of the talking, for Bridget suddenly found her voice fail her.
“Pippa,” said Miss Mason, “has true inventive genius. One night last January I told her to say her prayers before she got into bed. She announced that she’d already said them. ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘In my baf,’ she replied, ‘much warmer.’ I couldn’t help feeling there was a good deal to be said in favour of the bathroom on a cold winter’s night. But all the same, I told her she was irreverent to say her prayers lying down. I knew she’d said them that way. She always ends her ablutions with lying full length in the water. Whereupon she remarked in an aggrieved voice, ‘Turned over on my front, anyhow.’”
“True prostration in prayer,” laughed Bridget. “I shall love Pippa.”
Already it was almost impossible to believe Bridget to be the same apathetic woman who, slovenly and untidy, had entered the dingy little parlour barely two hours previously. After lunch and on the way to some flats in Beaufort Street she was almost radiant.
“We will put things through as quickly as we can,” said Miss Mason. “I hate loitering when one has set out on a piece of business.” And in her heart she was longing to get Bridget away from the dismal surroundings of her present home without a moment’s delay. She would have liked to take her to her own studio, only there was no second bedroom, and also Jasper would have seen her.
After a little search Miss Mason decided on a flat she thought would do. It was on the third floor, and consisted of a dining-room, a drawing-room, four bedrooms, a servant’s room, a bathroom, and kitchen.
“What do you think of it?” asked Miss Mason. “It’s for you to say as you’ll be living in it.”