We are a large community of women at Kent House, most of us young and untried, though among the older ones we are glad to number a few lecturers, teachers, and writers, besides nurses from one or other of the great nursing associations of London. Friends in need these last, especially in the winter-time, when chills and other small ailments attack our ranks like foes to be fought and conquered.
“Such a lot of women living together, and so little bickering and snarling!” a visitor exclaimed the other day. But I think most of us are too busy to be cantankerous, and our common womanhood, lived out in homelike surroundings, links us too closely together for petty word-wars.
Happy, well-filled student life forms the principal element of the household, though I was amused one day to find that even students may be unlearned in the etymology of words. One of our candidates for admission emulated the immortal M. Jourdain, who talked prose without knowing it, by remarking doubtfully, “I am not a student. I only go to Bedford College for classes.”
Most of the girls sleep in cubicles separated by thin wood partitions, the rooms being reserved for the older ladies, except two or three double rooms apportioned to girls who chum together.
Conversation is carried on freely “over the cubicle wall,” and listeners may sometimes overhear scraps illustrating the good comradeship and bonhomie of student life.
“Oh, Molly,” cries one girl to her mate next door, “when you leave the Slade and set up a studio, and Harold and I are earning enough to marry on, won’t we have many a jaw about jolly old Kent House left behind!”
Kent House prices are framed to meet slender resources. For twelve shillings weekly a girl can provide herself with a snug little cubicle and good breakfast and supper. The dining-hall menu is of a varied order, always tea, coffee, and cocoa without stint, a roast joint, and two or three made dishes, fish or soup, bread and butter, and jam or marmalade.
Dinner and afternoon tea are not included in the fixed board tariff, but paid for at table, restaurant fashion—uniform charge 9d. and 4d., respectively.
Anyone who orders “five o’clock tea” is served with a pot freshly made for each person, bread and butter, muffins, or tea-cake. We are glad to welcome non-residents to both these meals.
“But how can you make the concern pay at such prices?” asks some cynical political economist.