On the way to the front door they all looked into the principal schoolroom. Miriam saw a long wide dining-room table covered with brown American cloth. Shelves neatly crowded with books lined one wall from floor to ceiling. Opposite them at the far end of the room was a heavy grey marble mantelpiece, on which stood a heavy green marble clock frame. At its centre a gold-faced clock ticked softly. Opposite the windows were two shallow alcoves. In one stood a shrouded blackboard on an easel. The other held a piano with a high slender back. The prancing outward sweep of its lid gave Miriam the impression of an afternoon dress.
Miss Deborah drew up one of the Venetian blinds. They all crowded to the window and looked out on a small garden backed by trees and lying in deep shadow. Beyond were more gardens and the brownish backs of small old brick houses. Low walls separated the school garden from the gardens on either side.
“On our right we have a school for the deaf and dumb,” said Miss Perne; “on the other side is a family of Polish Jews.”
“Mother, why did you pile it on?”
They would soon be down at the corner of Banbury Park where the tram lines ended and the Favorite omnibuses were standing in the muddy road under the shadow of the railway bridge. Through the jingling of the trams, the dop-dop of the hoofs of the tram-horses and the noise of a screaming train thundering over the bridge, Miriam made her voice heard, gazing through the spotted veil at her mother’s quivering features.
“They might have made me do all sorts of things I can’t do.”
Mrs. Henderson’s voice, breathless with walking, made a little sound of protest, a narrowed sound that told Miriam her amusement was half annoyance. The dark, noisy bridge, the clatter and rattle and the mud through which she must plunge to an omnibus exasperated her to the limit of her endurance.
“I’d got the post,” she said angrily; “you could see it was all settled and then you went saying those things.”
Glancing at the thin shrouded features she saw the faint lift of her mother’s eyebrows and the firmly speechless mouth.
“Piccadilly—jump on, chickie.”
“Let’s go outside now it’s fine,” said Miriam crossly.
Reaching the top of the omnibus she hurried to the front seat on the left hand side.
“That’s a very windy spot.”
“No it isn’t, it’s quite hot. The sun’s come out now. It’s rained for weeks. It won’t rain any more. It’ll be hot. You won’t feel the wind. Will you have the corner, mother?”
“No, chick, you sit there.”
Miriam screwed herself into the corner seat, crossing her knees and grazing the tips of her shoes.
“This is the only place on the top of a bus.”
Mrs. Henderson sat down at her side.
“I always make Harriett come up here when we go up to the West End.”
“Of course it’s the only place,” she insisted in response to her mother’s amused laugh. “No one smoking or talking in front; you can see out in front and you can see the shops if there are any, and you’re not falling off all the time. The bus goes on the left side of the road and tilts to the left.”
The seats were filling up and the driver appeared clambering into his place.
“Didn’t you ever think of that? Didn’t you ever think of the bus tilting that way?” persisted Miriam to her mother’s inattentive face. “Fancy never thinking of it. It’s beastly on the other side.”
The omnibus jerked forward.
“You ought to be a man, Mimmy.”
“I liked that little short one,” said Miriam contentedly as they came from under the roar of the bridge. “They were awfully nice, weren’t they? They seemed to have made up their mind to take me before we went. … So I think they like us. I wonder why they like us. Didn’t you think they liked us? Don’t you think they are awfully nice?”
“I do. They are very charming ladies.”
“Yes, but wasn’t it awfully rum their liking us in that funny way?”
“I’m sure I don’t see why they should not.”
“Oh, mother, you know what I mean. I like them. I’m perfectly sure I shall like them. D’you remember the little one saying all girls ought to marry? Why did she say that?”
“They are dear funny little O.M.’s,” said Mrs. Henderson merrily. She was sitting with her knees crossed, the stuff of her brown canvas dress was dragged across them into an ugly fold by the weight of the velvet panel at the side of the skirt. She looked very small and resourceless. And there were the Pernes with their house and their school. They were old maids. Of course. What then?
“I never dreamed of getting such a big salary.”
“Oh, my chickie, I’m afraid it isn’t much.”
“It is, mother, it’s lovely.”
“Oh—eh—well.”
Miriam turned fiercely to the roadway on her left.
She had missed the first swing forward of the vehicle and the first movements of the compact street.
They were going ahead now at a steady even trot. Her face was bathed in the flow of the breeze.
Little rivulets played about her temples, feeling their way through her hair. She drew off her gloves without turning from the flowing roadway. As they went on and on down the long road Miriam forgot her companion in the tranquil sense of being carried securely forward through the air away from people and problems. Ahead of her, at the end of the long drive, lay three sunlit weeks, bright now in the certainty of the shadow that lay beyond them … “the junior school” … “four boarders.”
They lumbered at last round a corner and out into a wide thoroughfare, drawing up outside a newly-built public house. Above it rose row upon row of upper windows sunk in masses of ornamental terra-cotta-coloured plaster. Branch roads, laid with tram lines led off in every direction. Miriam’s eyes
