the Greens have been charming, quite excited about the plans … coming up next week . … Miriam leapt to her feet and began hastily putting on her things. “Eve is coming to London for a six months’ course in floral decorations. She is putting up at a hostel.” She pulled on her cold sodden shoes. “Eve is going to be an assistant in a flower shop at fifteen shillings a week. She has taken a cubicle at a branch of the Young Women’s Bible Association.” By the time she was ready she felt she must have dreamed the news. Eve, not a governess, free, in London, just as she was herself. Another self, in London. Eve being led about and taught London, going about under the same skies, in the streets, feeling exactly as she felt. Nothing would have changed before she came. The rain gently thudding on the roof and rattling against the landing skylight was Eve’s rain. She was listening to it and hearing it in exactly the same way. …
The girls did not realise the news at all. They kept going off into questions about details until the fact of Eve’s coming disappeared altogether and only Eve’s point of view and Eve’s courage and her difficulties remained. … One had told it the wrong way. Better not to have given any facts at all but just to have said Eve’s coming to London; isn’t it weird? But then they would have said is she coming to London to see the Queen? The Queen. That would have been true. She was coming to London partly to see the Queen. Perhaps the trouble was that they had been cheated by not being told exactly how Eve was only just managing to come at all and how scraped everything would be. But at least they realised that one had people belonging to one who made up their minds and did definite things, like other people. It was amazing to decide to come to London and be a florist; Napoleon . They realised that and nothing else. She would be able to tell Mr. Hancock on Monday; first him, first thing in the morning and the Orlys during the day.
Mr. Hancock understood at once, making no response at all at first and then standing quietly about near her as she busied herself with her dusting really giving himself to taking in the simple stupendous fact; and