Walter had very few friends. There were elderly ladies, friends of his mother’s who called on us, and two cousins who lived at Southsea, and sometimes came up for the day.
I did not care for the Southsea cousins; they were effusive and rather stupid, and seemed somehow to be pretending, always, to be different from what they were.
Some of the old ladies were rather nice; there was a Miss Mix, who had blue Persian cats. She gave us a kitten. She was very small, much smaller than Mrs. Sebright, and more lively. She had a sense of fun, and seemed to find her life rather funny, though she lived all alone with her cats in a flat near Earl’s Court, and was very poor.
Then there was Mrs. Allsopp, big and fat, and more earnest. She worked for the same church as Mrs. Sebright, and she had a girls’ club connected with the church. She tried to ‘interest’ me in the girls’ club and was ‘very disappointed’ that I would not come and help with it.
And there were two Miss Fergusons who wrote books on Italy and talked about Art, but foolishly, I thought, as if they did not really know what it meant at all.
Miss Mix was much the nicest.
Then there were Walter’s colleagues at the University.
Several of them lived at Hampstead, and their wives came to call on me. They were quite kind and quite friendly, but dull, I thought. They talked about University affairs which I did not know about; not like Maud, but more as dutiful wives, who were bound to be interested in examinations and students because their husbands were.
They asked me how I saw my husband’s pupils, and I said I did not see them.
Walter had never suggested my seeing his pupils. He did not care about them very much I think; he cared far more for the stuff he taught than the people he taught it to; but they said I ought to see them.