Pushing back her hair she sponged the day from her face sousing luxuriously in the large basin and listening to Grace moving slowly about upstairs. Seizing a towel she ran up the little single flight and stood towelling inside Grace’s door. Hullo pink-face, laughed Grace tenderly, smoothing tissue paper into a large hat box—I say it must be an enormous one—It is; it’s huge smiled Grace—You must show it to me tomorrow—Miriam ran downstairs and back to the mirror in her room to look at her clean untroubled face. Don’t run about the house, come down to supper, called Florrie from below.
Have they brought the sausages, asked Mrs. Philps acidly.
Yes, scowled Florrie.
Don’t forget to tell Christine how we like them done, said Grace frowning anxiously. Miriam took her eyes from the protruding eyes of the Shakespeare on the wall opposite, and shut away within her her sharp sense of the many things ranged below him on the mantelpiece behind Florrie, the landscape on one side of him, the picture of Queen Victoria leaning on a walking stick between two Hindu servants, receiving an address, on the other side, the Satsuma vases and bowls on the sideboard behind Mrs. Philps, the little sharp bow of narrow curtain-screened windows behind Grace, the clean gleam on everything.
Chris tine ?
Oh yes, didn’t you know? She’s been with us a month—
What became of Amelia?
Oh we had to let her go. She got fat and lazy.
They all do! they’re all the same—Go on Miriam.
—Well, said Miriam from the midst of her second helping—they both listened, and the steps came shambling up their stairs—and they heard