In thought Anne went back over the long, dreary years—the incredibly empty years of a woman whom lack of means as well as lack of opportunity cuts off from the world.
A woman moreover, whose youth was spent under conditions less elastic, less favourable to development than those of modern days.
The cold bare nave of St. Jude’s rose vividly in her mind. She saw the pews full of women in frowsy faded bonnets—the bonnets of Dalston.
She saw the parish room lighted by unshaded gas-burners, in which, shy as she was, she had held classes for work-girls. Again she watched them bending over their desks, giggling and nudging one another when she entered the room.
She remembered the look of the street when after the appointed hour for her class, she emerged from the stuffy room into the night air.
There was a butcher’s shop opposite, with a row of flaring lights, and the butcher in a greasy apron used to stand upon the pavement shouting his wares to the hurrying passers-by.
Then there was the return to the dingy house. A hurried lighting of the gas in the entrance passage, the glare of which revealed the oil-cloth on the floor, growing more worn and shabby every year. How well Anne remembered what was left of the pattern of that oil-cloth!
A descent into the kitchen followed, where she prepared the supper, and directed the clumsy movements of Harriet, the little maid-of-all-work.
Supper then with her father, who sometimes scarcely raised his head from his plate, and seldom spoke a word.
Anne remembered one or two of the curates who had tried to make friends with her.