Presently she thrust them back in disgust.
“I believe it’s all bad, foolish, aimless; and I hoped once—”
She flung herself back in the arm-chair, and her face grew rigid. “Well, there’s nothing to be done but to go on living—till I die!” she thought, with the hopeless finality of youth.
Some twenty minutes later she was startled by a voice in the passage below, and then by the sound of a footstep on the stairs.
There was a knock at her door, and she sprang up.
“Come in,” she called.—“Oh, Miss Miles, it’s you. How nice of you to come!” She ran to her, and seized her two hands impulsively. “Do sit down. Here’s the least uncomfortable chair, and here’s a cushion for your head. Oh, there isn’t a footstool. I’m so sorry! You left your waterproof downstairs, I suppose. Was Mrs. Fowler furious? I’m so glad to see you.”
Miss Miles sank into the arm-chair a trifle bewildered. She hardly understood the warmth of her greeting. A lady not remarkable for her imaginative qualities, she would have been surprised and puzzled at the suggestion that Bridget’s many hours of loneliness in any way accounted for its fervor.
“I had to go out to get some Cambridge examination papers I ordered,” she began, “and as I was passing I thought you might like to see the new time-table; there are some changes in it.” She began to unfold a document on foolscap, as she spoke.
“Oh, thank you, never mind,” Bridget returned with haste. “Let us talk. I feel like sitting up and beginning to play, now you’ve come,” she said gayly. “Oh, it’s been ten thousand ages since yesterday morning. What have you been doing? I’ve been bored to death. Two minutes ago I was wondering whether a fall from this window would be fatal, but I decided not to try that form, because the rain might take my hair out of curl, and that is so unbecoming, you know.”
She spoke in a laughing, tremulous tone, from which tears were not far removed. Miss Miles looked at her blankly.