Kirsty sat solidly down on a chair beside the dressing-table.
"So am I," she said. "I had almost given up hope. Oh! I know it's not a nice thing to say, but I don't care. You don't know what it means never to be first with anyone, to know you don't matter, that no one needs you. At home—well, Father has his church, and Mother has her bronchitis, and Kate has her Girl's Club, and Archie has his office, and they don't seem to feel the need of anything else. And you, Lizbeth, you never cared for me as I cared for you. You have so many friends; but I have no pretty ways, and I've a sharp tongue, and I can't help seeing through people, so I don't make friends.... And oh! how I have wanted a house of my own! That's not the proper thing to say either, but I have—a place of my own to polish and clean and keep cosy. I pictured it so often—specially, somehow, the storeroom. I knew where I would put every can on the shelves."
She rubbed with her handkerchief along the smooth surface of the dressing-table. "Every spring when I polished the furniture I thought, 'Next spring, perhaps, I'll polish my own best bedroom furniture'; but nobody looked the road I was on. Then Andrew came, and—I couldn't believe it at first—he liked me, he wanted to talk to me, he looked at me first when he came into the room.... He's three years younger than me, and he's not at all good-looking, but he's mine, and when he looks at me I feel like a queen crowned."
Elizabeth swallowed an awkward lump in her throat, and stood fingering the crochet edge of the toilet-cover without saying anything.
Then Kirsty jumped up, her own bustling little self again, rather ashamed of her long speech.
"Here I am keeping you, and Mr. Townshend standing waiting in the lobby. Poor man! He seems nice, Lizbeth, but he's awfully English."
Elizabeth followed her friend to the door, and stooping down, kissed her. "Bless you, Kirsty," she said.
She was rather silent on the way home. She said Mr. Christie's jocularity had depressed her.
"I suppose I may not laugh," Mr. Townshend remarked, "but I think Fish would have 'lawffed.' That's a good idea of yours about slaves."
"Were you listening?" she smiled ruefully. "It was wretched of me, when you think of that faithful couple, Marget and Ellen. That's the worst of this world, you can't score off one person without hurting someone quite innocent."