"You're not quite yourself, are you?" she said, consideringly. Her eyes had the brightened gleam of one plunging alive into a serial tale, one of these in which lords and ladies behave strangely and the typewriting girl rules the tempest. As she put her key in the latch she looked round again. But there were no untoward appearances dogging them in the distance. There was a disappointing emptiness in the street.
The gas was lit in the hall at last, accentuating its gloom. The rather dismal illumination fell on a mahogany table under the stair where stood a row of candlesticks, each bearing a different length of candle and a slip of paper.
Susan's ally paused to examine them, reading out the names scribbled on the slips. It was the custom for those who were to be out late to leave their candles in the hall, and the last one in, finding a solitary candlestick left downstairs, knew that it was her business to chain the door.
"Miss Shanklin, Miss Friend, Miss Mitchell—" read out the inquisitor. "Mitchell is burnt down into the socket; she reads in bed. She'll set us on fire one night.—Miss Robinson—that's me, but I've changed my mind:—Miss Grahame—"
Susan made no sign. Then she remembered.—That was her name again.
"Oh, yes," she said, "is that mine?"
The other girl nodded to herself.
"Well," she said. "It's been brought down by mistake. Better take it up with you; they don't turn the gas off till ten."
She watched Susan go wearily up the long flights, and then ran swiftly along the passage and called down to the basement. The boy who opened the door to strangers and carried coals answered her call out of the black gulf of the kitchen stair;—his eyes glittering, like a demon invisible in the dark.
"What are you ladies wanting now?" he asked in an injured voice—"You can't have 'em!"