“Well, I do!” Claire cried briskly. “There’s no difficulty about that. I’m sick of wet walks myself. I’ll whistle for a taxi, and we’ll drive home in state. I’ll take you home first, and then go on myself; or, if you like, I’ll come in with you and help you to bed.”
“P–please. Oh, yes, please, do come! I don’t want to be alone,” faltered Sophie weakly; but she wiped her eyes, and in characteristic fashion began to cheer up at the thought of the drive home.
There was a cheerful fire burning in Sophie’s sitting-room, and the table was laid for tea in quite an appetising fashion. The landlady came in at the sound of footsteps, and showed a sympathetic interest at the sight of Sophie’s tear-stained face.
“I told you you weren’t fit to go out!” she said sagely. “Now just sit yourself down before the fire, and I’ll take your things upstairs and bring you down a warm shawl. Then you shall have your teas. I’ll bring in a little table, so you can have it where you are.” She left the room, and Sophie looked after her with grateful eyes.
“That’s what I pay for!” she said eloquently. “She’s so kind! I love that woman for all her niceness to me. I told you I had no right to pay so much rent. I came in just for a few weeks until I could find something else, and I haven’t had the heart to move. I’ve been in such holes, and had such awful landladies. They seem divided into two big classes, kind and dirty, or clean and mad! When you get one who is kind and clean, you feel so grateful that you’d pay your last penny rather than move away. Oh, how lovely! how lovely! how lovely! It’s Friday night, and I can be ill comfortably all the time till Monday morning! Aren’t we jolly well-off to have our Saturdays to ourselves? How thankful the poor clerks and typists would be to be in our place!”
She was smiling again, enjoying the warmth of the fire, the ease of the cushioned chair. When Mrs Rogers entered she snoodled into the folds of a knitted shawl, and lay back placidly while the kind creature took off her wet shoes and stockings and replaced them by a long pair of fleecy woollen bed-socks, reaching knee high. The landlady knelt to her task, and Sophie laid a hand on the top of starched lace and magenta velvet, and cried, “Rise, Lady Susan Rogers! One of the truest ladies that ever breathed...”
“How you do talk!” said the landlady, but her eyes shone. As she expounded to her husband in the kitchen, “Miss Blake had such a way with her. When ladies were like that you didn’t care what you did, but there was them as treated you like Kaffirs.”
Tea was quite a cheerful and sociable little meal, during which no reference was made to Sophie’s ailments, but when the cups had been replaced on the central table, Claire seated herself and said with an air of decision—
“Now we’re going to have a disagreeable conversation! I don’t approve of the way you have been going on this last month, and it’s time it came to an end. You are ill, and it’s your business to take steps to get better!”
“Oh!”