encouraging tone the things she had arranged beforehand in her own mind. Before she went she bustled to the window and tweaked the ends of the little Madras muslin curtains. Why don’t you go down to the drawn-room for a while—she asked tweaking and flicking.—You’ll have it all to yourself. Mr. Elsing’s gone out. I should go down if I was you and get a warm up.—Miriam thanked her and promised to go and wondered whether the Norwegian’s name was Helsing or Elsen. When Mrs. Bailey had gone she walked busily about her affronted room. It must be Helsing. A man named Elsen would be shorter and stouter and kindly. Of course she would not go down to the drawing-room. She ransacked her Saratoga trunk and found a Havet and a phrase book. She would teach Sissie the rules of French pronunciation and two or three phrases every day and make some sort of beginning of syntax with Havet. There would be no difficulty in filling up the quarter of an hour. But it would be teaching in the bad cruel old-fashioned way. To begin at once with Piccola or Le Roi des Montagnes and talk to her in the character of a Frenchman wanting to become a boarder would be the best. … But Sissie would not grasp that slow way. It would be too long before she began to see that she was learning anything … But the smattering of phrases and rules from a book handed out without any trouble to herself on her way to her room and before she wanted to go out was too little to give in exchange for a proper breakfast ready for her in a warm room every day and the option of having single meals at any time for a very small sum … because the Baileys were trying to turn themselves into an English family prepared to receive foreigners who wanted to learn English she had promised the lessons as if she thought the plan good. …
She crept downstairs through the silent empty house, pausing at the open drawing-room door to listen to the faint faraway subterranean sounds coming from the kitchen. All the furniture seemed to be waiting for someone or something. That was a console table. She must have noticed the jar on it as she came into the room, or somewhere else, it looked so familiar. One ought to know the name of the material it was