“It’s hugely funny, I assure you,” he interrupted, “to live in a back-street bedroom—‘lodgings for respectable men’—on thirty shillings a week, and save out of that.”
“Well, then you’ve come a cropper.”
“Really, Miss Stevens,” he replied drily, “it would be rather embarrassing to have to account to you for all my misdeeds.”
“Oh, I don’t want to hear ’em. Not I—I’m not that sort But when I like a man, I like to know just what he is. That’s all. Now my father was a butler, and my mother a housekeeper, and they used to let lodgings in Yarmouth. And they’re dead now, and I shift for myself. Now you know all about me. I think I’d better carry that parcel.”
She was rather defiant. Joyce could not understand her. Surely something more than inconsequent bad taste had prompted her to draw this distinction between their respective origins. But he was too self-centred to speculate deeply upon feminine problems. He hugged the parcel closer, and said:—
“Nonsense. The paper is torn and all the stuff will drop out.”
“Oh, then I must carry it,” she cried, in quite a different tone. But he refused gallantly.
“What’s inside it?” he asked, glad to divert the conversation into less perplexing channels.
“It’s a dress—the one I wear in the third act. Well, you can carry it. My head’s splitting. And I’m ready to drop.”
They had reached the end of the Parade. Their way lay at right angles through the town. It was a gusty, though warm night, and the cloud-racked sky and sea were dimly visible.