Silence again, while the Freshers reflected that they knew very well whom Miss Helen Ross would have chosen if she had had the chance, and were glad that she hadn’t.
“Well, I’ll call round about ten. Make up your fire, and be comfortable. You’re allowed a scuttle of coals a day, and let me warn you to use it! If it’s not all burnt, keep a few lumps in a convenient cache—a box under the bed will do. It comes in handy for another day, and when it gets really cold you can stoke up at night and have a fire to dress by in the morning. The authorities don’t approve of that—they say it’s bad for the stoves. Personally I consider myself before any stoves.”
She nodded casually and strode from the room, leaving the two friends divided between gratitude for her kindness and prejudice against her personality.
“Don’t like her a bit, do you?”
“Humph. So-so! Means well, I think. Wonder how she knows Dan? He never mentioned her name.”
“Not at all the sort of girl Dan would care for! Such a bumptious manner. A good many of them have, I observe. Fearfully self-possessed. Perhaps it’s a special effort to impress the Freshers. She didn’t take much notice of me, but I’m coming with you all the same to buy fixings for my room, and hear the second-year auctioneer. Call for me when you’re ready, like a dear. I’m off now to read until ten o’clock.”
Darsie shut herself in her room, and set to work at her burry with all the ardour of a beginner, so that the hour and a half passed like a flash, and it seemed as if she had scarcely begun before Hannah’s solid bang sounded at the door, and she went out into the corridor to follow Helen Ross to the Gym.
The auction had already begun, and the auctioneer, a fresh-looking girl with grey eyes planted extraordinarily far apart, was engaged in extolling the excellencies of an aged kettle to a laughing circle of girls. She wore a black dress cut square at the neck, and a rose-coloured ribbon twined round her head. She held out the kettle at the length of a bare white arm, and raised her clear voice in delightful imitation of the professional wheedle.
“Friends and Freshers! We now come to Lot Three, one of the most striking and interesting on the catalogue. A kettle, ladies, is always a useful article, but this is no ordinary kettle. We have it on unimpeachable authority that this kettle was the kettle in residence at the establishment of our late colleague Miss Constantia Lawson, the Senior Classic of her year! The kettle of a Senior Classic, Freshers! The kettle which has ministered to her refreshment, which has been, in the language of the poem, the fount of her inspiration! What price shall I say, ladies, for the kettle of a Senior Classic? Sixpence! Did somebody say sixpence! For the kettle of a Senior Classic! Eightpence! Thank you, madam. For the kettle
