She had come to London at the beginning of September; before that month was out she had decided to leave Lancaster Gate. For some reason or other her quarter's allowance had not arrived, and she wrote to Chaff about it. Chaff promised to look to the matter. She wrote also to Richenda Earle, stating the kind of lodging she required, and asking whether Richenda knew of such an one. To this last letter she had a reply by return of post. Richenda proposed the house of her married sister, which was in Sutherland Place, Bayswater. Without prejudice to her choice, Louie took a walk along Sutherland Place, and received an impression of a quiet street with milk-carts drawn up by the kerb and virginia creeper covering the houses with crimson. As she passed the door Richenda had specified, the door opened, and a squarer and older Richenda came out with a string bag in her hand. That, Louie thought, would be Mrs. Leggat, the wife of the estate-agent's clerk.
A week later Louie moved into Mrs. Leggat's first floor-front-bed-sitting-room. That night she counted her money. The result of her calculations caused her to jump up, as if she had thoughts of seeking some occupation or other that very night. Her quarter's allowance had still not come. Then Mr. Leggat, a lumpy-headed man with rabbit teeth and a Duke of Wellington nose, came in to fix a gas-burner for her, and she fell into talk with him. He wiped his hands ceaselessly on an old rag as he talked. He told her it was a pity that Rich had not stuck to her book-keeping; he himself would have been head clerk by this time had he had her thorough practical grounding instead of having had to knock about the world and fend for himself; and he asked her what sort of a villa-building-site Rainham Parva would, in her opinion, make. He added that it was nice to have "the rooms" (he used the plural) let to somebody they knew something about, and then, having omitted to shake hands with her on coming in, did so before going out, and evidently accounted their introduction complete. He came back presently for a pair of pincers he had forgotten, left her a Carter Paterson card for her window in case she should have need of one, said that one of these Sundays they must all go round to the Earles in Westbourne Grove to tea, made a pun on the words Earle and Lord, and went out again. An hour later Louie heard him tiptoeing discreetly past her door on his way upstairs to bed.
Louie was resolved, however, to put a stop to the "Earle and Lord" business once for all. She was a Causton, not a Scarisbrick, in Sutherland Place.
She felt herself to be already on the verge of a new life that was—let us say amusing—precisely in proportion as it was different from any life she had ever known. She must be—if the word may pass—amused; she told herself so, clinching the argument by adding that it was far better to laugh than to cry. She had promised Richenda that she would call and see her Mr. Weston at his Business School in Holborn; and this might be—well, amusing. She went without loss of time. She took the Oxford Street bus one morning and alighted at the door of the School.
She mounted three floors of narrow, old-fashioned stairs, asked a fair, perky boy, who somehow managed to make a good suit of clothes look cheap, where she should find Mr. Weston, and presently found herself introducing herself to a thin and melancholy-looking man with a sparse and colourless beard, a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, and a gentle and hopeless voice. This was "the Secretary Bird," then. He shook hands slackly with her, placed a chair for her in one of the bays of a sort of E that was lined with books of reference, and she listened to his soft, dispirited voice and to the clicking of typewriters in an adjoining room. He thanked her for "all her kindnesses" to Richenda, whatever these might have been, and presently a skimpy little woman in green plaid, with eyes that peered quizzically behind spectacles and "destined spinster" written all over her, tiptoed for a moment at the end of the bay of books, uncertain whether to approach. Then the fair, perky boy who made good clothes look cheap also came up. Mr. Weston said: "Excuse me—yes, Miss Windus?" Louie saw that she was interrupting the morning's work. She rose.
"I daresay we shall see one another again," she said. "Good-bye."
And, outside on the Holborn pavement again, she said to herself with decision: "Thanks—but no Business Schools for me!—Poor Richenda!"
Three weeks later she became a student at that very school.
There is no puzzle about it. Some things come no less unexpectedly that they are more than reasonably to be expected. To put this as briefly as it can be put, she had merely discovered that an affair of atmosphere had become an affair of fact. That was all—nothing more, nothing less. But that was no reason why she should not be amused.
The natural thing for young women in such circumstances to do is to seek their mothers. If Louie did this natural thing a little unnaturally—well, she did it unnaturally, that was all. The row, scene, or whatever it was going to be, had better be got over; then she could proceed to amuse herself. She had wired that she was coming; the Captain had met her at Trant station; but she had had nothing to say to the Captain.