Obediently and without a word she put on her coat and her bedraggled hat and we turned to the door.
“Look here,” I said, “I haven’t meant to be unkind. And Heaven knows I’ve no right to throw stones at you. We are all in a bad mess in this world—you and I, and the rest. You don’t know what I’m talking about and it doesn’t matter. And now let’s find a good quiet restaurant where we can dine slowly and comfortably like two friends who have a lot to talk over.”
In a moment she was all animation. The suggestion that I was going to act toward her as though she were a lady was, according to her standards, wildly unconventional.
“Well, you’re funny,” she replied, laughing; “you really are funny.” And I could see that for once, in a long time, perhaps, the faintest touch of romance had entered this sordid world for her.
As we came out, seeing that my attitude had changed so radically, she asked, “Would you get me a box of cigarettes? I haven’t any change.”
“Surely,” I said, and we stepped into a tobacconist’s shop. From there we took a taxi to L.’s Corner House, which she seemed to regard as sufficiently luxurious; and from there—but I’ll tell this in detail.
“Tell me,” I said, after she had given the order, picking something for herself and me; “you say you come from Wales. Tell me the name of a typical mining-town which is nearer London than some of the others—some place which is really poor and hard-worked.”
“Well, where I come from was pretty bad,” she ventured, giving me some unpronounceable name. “The people haven’t got much to live on there.”
I wish you might have heard the peculiar purr of her accent.
“And how far is that?”