She waved her hand again towards the canary, which flew across on to her shoulder. “Edward,” she explained. “He loves me. He loves my hair and my lips. He pecks and pulls at my hair in the mornings when I let him out of his cage. I lie in bed late—I have nothing to get up for— And Edward holds my chin between his nervous little claws and pushes his beak between my lips....”
Edward Williams looked with dislike at her hair and her lips. Her hair was grey and had a middle-aged, tangled curl in it. Her lips were dry and rather grey too.
“My name is Edward too,” he said.
“Well,” said the remittance woman, pleased. “Isn’t that a nice stroke of chance? Tell me about yourself. Why are you attempting an unlikely job like this?”
Edward at once felt pity in the air. He groped for pity instinctively. He told her in a plaintive voice about his loneliness, the fact that he had no mother and that Jimmy was killed at Loos, he told her of his efforts to support himself, of his love for Emily....
When he had finished he felt only slightly guilty and looked down at the book he wished her to buy. She did not want it but surely she could afford to buy something she did not want from a kindred soul. He would refuse at first her offer to buy his book, he thought.
“We are rather alike,” she said. “We neither of us get on with the world.”
Her voice was almost jealous. She so rarely met competition in her line.
“Yes,” said Edward. “But you are more fortunate than I, if you are hated. I am ignored, which is much worse.”
She assented doubtfully. “Certainly everybody hates me,” she insisted. It was her one vanity and her support.