“Where have you been?—keeping me waiting for my tea in this way! You never think of any one but yourself: never.”
The querulous complaint, and thin, shrill voice came from a small dark girl who sat at the window, peering out into the lighted street. I had not forgotten the sharp-featured sallow face and the deep-set eyes. It was Mabel Smith, the poor little lame and deformed girl I had seen in Torriana Square. She really did not look much older or bigger, and she spoke as abruptly as ever.
“I remember you, Johnny Ludlow.”
Mrs. Everty made the tea. Her dress, white one way, green the other, gleamed like silver in the lamplight. It had a quantity of white lace upon it: light green ribbons were twisted in her hair. “I should think it would be better to have those curtains drawn, Mabel. Your tea’s ready: if you will come to it.”
“But I choose to have the curtains open and I’ll take my tea here,” answered Mabel. “You may be going out again for hours, and what company should I have but the street? I don’t like to be shut up in a strange room: I might see ghosts. Johnny Ludlow, that’s a little coffee-table by the wall: if you’ll put it here it will hold my cup and saucer.”
I put it near her with her tea and plate of bread-and-butter.
“Won’t you sit by me? I am very lonely. Those other two can talk to one another.”
So I carried my cup and sat down by Mabel. The “other two,” as Mabel put it, were talking and laughing. Tod was taking a lesson in tea-making from her, and she called him awkward.
“Are you living here?” I asked of Mabel under cover of the noise.
“Living here! no,” she replied in her old abrupt fashion. “Do you think papa would let me be living over a shop in Oxford? My grandmamma lives near the town, and she invited me down on a visit to her. There was no one to bring me, and she said she would”—indicating Sophie—“and we came yesterday. Well, would you believe it? Grandmamma had meant next Saturday, and she could not take us in, having visitors already. I wanted to go back home; but she said she liked the look of Oxford, and she took these rooms for a week. Two guineas without fires and other extras: I call it dear. How came she to find you out, Johnny?”