Bridget made a swift gesture of dissent.
“No, it’s not that set I want,” she replied with a little smile. “They exasperate me. Oh, I know they are very good. I daresay they are nice, but they are so depressing. They all look as though they have been shipwrecked, and are clinging desperately to their last raft. No, no! I’d rather plunge into the sea at once, and be done with it. Besides, I always want to say awful things to them,” she added, with a change of tone and a laugh. “They look deliciously shockable, and they all have sad, reproachful eyes.”
The entrance of Matilda with the tea-tray interrupted Miss Miles’s serious challenge of the last assertion, and Bridget steadily refused to return again to the subject.
They talked of time-tables, of the iniquities of the Third Form, and of the chances of the Examinations, during tea.
“What are you going to do on Monday?” Miss Miles said, as she rose to go. Monday was a holiday in the schools. “Won’t you come to an extension lecture with me in the evening?”
“Thank you. I’ve saved half-a-crown, and I’m going to the Wagner concert,” Bridget answered smiling, as she shook hands. “Good-bye. Thank you so much for stopping.” She went down to the front door, and waved a farewell to her from the doorstep. Then she slowly mounted the stairs again, and re-entered the sitting-room. The little glow of excitement had faded from her eyes.
She crossed over to the mantel-piece, and stood leaning against it for some time, her head buried on her arm. “What a fool I was to say anything to her!” she thought bitterly. “The need of speaking to some one makes me abject. Oh, it’s awful—awful, to live like this. I feel as though some one had wrapped me round in a damp, gray veil.” She shuddered. After a moment she roused herself, lighted the lamp, and fetched some needlework from the bedroom. With this she resolutely employed herself till ten o’clock, her usual bedtime.
CHAPTER VI
Sunday was another pouring day. Bridget spent it in solitude. By the time evening came, she was desperate enough to put on her waterproof, and go to the nearest church for the sake of seeing some human beings. It was a Presbyterian church, dimly lighted, and filled with reeking fog. The woman who sat on her right, sniffed violently throughout the lessons, and sang the hymns in a loud voice with a pronounced cockney accent.
“The strine uprise, of joy and prise: Alleluia!” Bridget repeated the words after her to herself over and over again, repressing an hysterical desire to laugh as she did so. The man who preached had a monotonous, dreary voice, and his face looked blurred and indistinct in the heavy atmosphere. She gathered that the sermon was on the subject of the Last Judgment. As she left the pew when the service was over, her cloak brushed the hymn-book of her right-hand neighbor from the bench in front. She stooped at once to pick it up; but the woman had already pounced upon it. She turned a sour, disagreeable face towards the girl, and ignored her murmured apology. The stupid little incident seemed to Bridget the last drop in her cup of misery. She left the church struggling with her rising tears, trembling from head to foot. She was wet through by the time she reached the house; but she went straight to her bedroom. The day had been long enough.