laughter. All faces were turned her way. “What’s that Mr. Joe-anzen says?” laughed Mrs. Bailey towards the last speaker. The invisible man opposite Miss Scott was not even Mr. Helsing; only the younger fainter Norwegian, and this side of him an extraordinary person … an abruptly bulging coarse fringe, a coarse-grained cheek bulging from under an almost invisible deep-sunken eye, and abruptly shelving bust under a coarse serge bodice.
“ Mr. Yo-hanson says Mr. Mendy-zahble like n-gaiety.” Miriam glanced across the table. That was all . That little man with an adenoid voice and a narrow sniggering laugh that brought a flush and red spots all over his face, and shiny straight Sunday school hair watered and brushed flat, made up the party. Next to him was only Polly. Then came Miss Scott on Sissie’s left; then Sissie and round the corner the Norwegian. Everyone looked dreadful in the harsh light, secret and secretly hostile to everyone else, unwilling to be there; and even here though there was nothing and no one there was that everlasting conversational fussing and competition.
“Quite right,” hooted the bulky woman in a high pure girlish voice, “I doan blame ’im.”
Miriam turned towards the unexpectedness of her voice and sat helplessly observing. The serge sleeves were too short to cover her heavy red wrists; her pudgy hands held her knife and fork broadside, like salad servers. Her hair was combed flatly up over her large skull and twisted into a tiny screw at the top just behind the bulge of her fringe. Could she possibly be a boarder? She looked of far less consequence even than the Baileys. Her whole person was unconsciously ill at ease, making one feel ashamed.
“ Mrs. m-Barrow is another of ’em,” said the little man with his eyebrows raised as he sniggered out the words.
“I am Mr. Gunna, I doan believe in go-an abate with a face like a fiddle.”