The engagement was made subject to the decision of the bank people. Katherine wrote, and the reply directed her to call the following Monday morning; she rehearsed the interview more than once, and declared her belief that Cummings would prove the one barrier. On the Sunday, I took the trouble to write to Mr. Cummings a letter, beginning My dearest Tim, and expressing the fear that he no longer remembered me, but saying that the note was intended to assure him that, in spite of the long lapse of time, he was never absent from my thoughts, and that I remained, now and always, his ever affectionate Daisy. It is not clear whether my action could be defended on moral grounds, but I did ascertain from Katherine that she found the recipient of the letter in a dreamy, slightly absent-minded and quite reasonable state, and that he handsomely granted her appeal.
"But," he said, gazing hard at the inkstand, "any repetition of the error will, of course—er—Good morning!"
It was enough to make a woman feel important to note how swiftly members of her sex filled the vacancies caused by the departure of men. Mr. Hillier spoke of munition factories at Erith and other places, where thousands of girls were employed. At Woolwich, the canteens were run by women. It had long since given no astonishment to see a lady driving a motor-car; they seemed to do it more easily, less fussily than did their predecessors. I heard of waitresses in West End clubs, and of girl letter-sorters in the district Post Offices; I saw, when business took me to London, high booted, short skirted alert young women taking 'bus fares; from the kerbs came soprano voices calling the evening newspapers; lifts in the big shops were managed by smartly uniformed girls, and one observed them doing outside establishments the work hitherto performed by commissionaires. Some of my lady customers were deeply perturbed and shocked.
"It don't do to think what poor old Queen Victoria would have said," declared one, mournfully. "Thank Heaven, she wasn't spared to see this day. If she had been, it would have been the death of her. She'd never have survived it, dear soul. It's a mercy she was taken off when she was. Providence knows best."
The great argument with these good folk was that the occupations were unwomanly; they did not trouble to consider who else there was to do the work, and I always discovered they were the first to complain of any slight inconvenience to them created by the war, and full of indignation against some individuals whom they called the authorities. The authorities ought to have done this, the authorities should have done that; it was especially charged against the authorities that they were lacking in fore-sight, and deficient in the valuable quality of common sense. The most strenuous critics happened, by a coincidence, to be those who never contrived to remember whether my early closing day was Wednesday or Thursday.
I allowed conversation to go on in the shop, partly because one had all the natural curiosity to pick up any bits of news that were flying about, mainly because it was worth while that the place should offer an appearance of traffic. I have often seen people stop, attracted by the window, crease their features over some of the contents with a look of perplexity, and then, if the shop were empty, decide upon postponement and move away; if customers were inside, and there seemed a likelihood of an article of furniture being on the point of changing hands, then the shop was entered without delay. I hit upon the notion—it is improbable that I was the first to think of it—of placing some desirable arm-chair or attractive cabinet well in the foreground, and on it a ticket with the word "SOLD." The dodge rarely failed. Grapes that are out of reach invariably look the sweetest.
"Now could you manage, Miss Weston," it would be said, coaxingly, "to just write a nice little note to your customer, and say you're extremely sorry to find a mistake has been made? And send this round to my house on a hand-cart at once, and it will be there in time to be a surprise for my husband when he comes home!"
These were, of course, the exceptions. Plenty of my ladies were shrewd women doing good work with the various societies and associations that had been started in the borough, and I was rarely tired of hearing about their experiences, and always ready, I hope, to put my name down on their subscription lists. London grows kinder year by year, but there never was a period when amiability was so generally shown; perhaps there had never been a time when it was so much required. The need did not consist in money, but in friendliness. There were some who stood in urgent want of this.
A woman with her two children waited near to my door one day, gazing at the tram-cars in a bewildered manner. I went out, and asked if I could be of any assistance.