Claire suffered an anxious moment before she realised that for some unexplained reason Miss Willoughby was more pleased than annoyed by the intelligence. An air of something extraordinarily like relief passed over her features. She laughed gaily and said—
“I don’t think anything at all except that it is delightfully like Mrs Fanshawe. She wrote as if she had known you for ages. As a matter of fact she probably does know you quite well. She is so extraordinarily quick and clever, that she crowds as much life into an hour as an ordinary person does into a week. She told us that you had chosen to come to London to work, rather than go to India and have a good time. How plucky of you! And you teach at one of the big High Schools... You don’t look in the least like a school-mistress.”
“Ah! I’m off duty to-night! You should see me in the morning, in my working clothes. You should see me at night, correcting exercises on the dining-table in a lodging-house parlour, and cooking sausages in a chafing-dish for our evening meal. I ‘dig’ with the English mistress, and do most of our cooking myself, as the landlady’s tastes and ours don’t agree. I’m getting to be quite an expert at manufacturing sixpenny dainties.”
Janet Willoughby breathed a deep sigh; the diamond star on her neck sent out vivid gleams of light.
“What fun!” she sighed enviously. “What fun!” and as she spoke there flashed suddenly before the eyes of her listener a picture of the English mistress lying on the green plush sofa, her shabby slippers showing beneath the hem of her shabby skirt, spending the holiday Saturday evening at home because she had no invitations to go out, and no money to spare for an entertainment. “Oh, I do envy you!” sighed Janet deeply. “It’s one of my greatest ambitions to share rooms with a nice girl, and live the simple life, and be free to do whatever one liked. Mother loves independence in other girls, but her principles don’t extend to me. She says an only daughter’s place is at home. But you are an only daughter, too.”
“I am; but other circumstances were different. It was a case of being dependent on a stepfather or of working for myself—so I chose to work, and—”
“And I’m sure you never regret it!”
Claire extended her hands in the expressive French shrug.
“Ah, but I do! Horribly, at times. Even now, after three months’ work I have a conviction that I shall regret it more and more as time goes on; but if I had to decide again, I’d do just the same. It’s a question of principle versus so many things—laziness and self-indulgence, and wanting to have a good time, and the habits of a lifetime, and irritation with stupid girls who won’t work.”
Janet Willoughby gave a soft murmur of understanding.