“She has evidently taken a great fancy to you,” replied Celia, evasively. “And that is the thing.” In her heart she felt a touch of disappointment. “Why did Miss Norreys look at me with a kind of disapproval?” she asked herself. “She surely can’t be stuck-up or capricious—she has such a good face.”
“Do you think she will really be able to help us—you?” she went on.
“I am sure of it. I had not time to tell her about you, Celia, but you see once I get an independent footing it will be all right for you. I managed to tell her a good deal. I am certain she sympathises with the position, the longing for emancipation—oh, yes, I feel that I have got my foot on the first rung of the ladder,” she concluded, enthusiastically.
Some days passed, nevertheless, without any more of the ladder appearing through the haze. Miss Norreys made no sign. The days passed pleasantly, however, so pleasantly that Winifred sometimes felt half guilty for enjoying them and making no further effort towards the realisation of those schemes for the future which had been the underlying “but” of her own and, indeed, of Celia’s visit to London. It was difficult to do anything, or to know what to do. Mrs Balderson, in her innocence of these girls having any thoughts or aspirations other than those she remembered in her own girlhood, exhausted herself in the endeavour to make them enjoy themselves, to “have a good time,” and she succeeded. They had never had a better—never, indeed, half so good!
They were scarcely free, however, to do anything but what was planned for them. Morning, noon, and night for the first two weeks of their stay, engagements of all kinds were the order of the day. Shoppings, exhibitions, concerts, plays, afternoon teas, occasional dinner-parties at home, or, more rarely, an invitation for one girl to accompany her host and hostess to dine elsewhere, one or two very mild winter dances even—what, in the old and less sophisticated days, would have been called “carpet-dances”—all these things followed each other in such quick rotation as to make life in London, even in November, seem to these country girls a sort of kaleidoscope.
“I suppose we are learning a good deal, even unconsciously. I suppose it is all a sort of experience it is well to go through,” said Winifred, dubiously. “But it is not what I expected. I see what it is, Celia; I shall have to come up again on my own account, really, to go into things and arrange something. Father and mother cannot object now that I have got friends here, and some one to advise me.”
“Do you mean Miss Norreys?” said Celia.
“Yes—and—I should not be very surprised if Lady Campion asked me to stay with her, do you know? She was quite interested the other day when I said a little to her—just a very little—of my wish to do something. She seemed quite struck by it, and said she would like to talk more about it.”
“Are you sure she understood what you mean? She may have thought you would like to help in her Decoration Guilds, or Shakespeare Recitals, or some of those things she has so many of,” said Celia. “There are heaps of those half-play, half-work things for girls who don’t need to work really, you know.”
Celia had guessed rightly. Lady Campion, though she had inadvertently conveyed to Miss Norreys a wrong impression of Miss Maryon’s position, had no thought of suggesting to the girl any work of the kind Winifred had set before herself.