Short Fiction

up⁠—a system which seemed to be very pleasant to those females who were gifted with musical aptitudes⁠—she found herself to be less quick, less expert, less useful than her neighbours. This was very sad, for she had always been buoyed up by an unconscious conviction of her own superior intelligence. And then, though there had been neither promises nor threats, she had become aware⁠—at any rate had thought that she was aware⁠—that those girls who could catch and use the tinkling sounds would rise more quickly to higher pay than the less gifted ones. She had struggled therefore to overcome the difficulty. She had endeavoured to force her ears to do that which her ears were not capable of accomplishing. She had failed, and today had owned to herself that she must fail. But Sophy had been one of the first to catch the tinkling sounds. Lucy came back to her room sad and down at heart and full of troubles. She had a long task of needlework before her, which had been put by for awhile through causes consequent on Sophy’s illness. “Now she is better perhaps he will marry her and take her away, and I shall be alone again,” she said to herself, as though declaring that such a state of things would be a relief to her, and almost a happiness.

“He has just been here,” said Sophy to her as soon as she entered the room. Sophy was painfully, cruelly smart, clean and starched, and shining about her locks⁠—so prepared that, as Lucy thought, she must have evidently expected him.

“Well;⁠—and what did he say?”

“He has not said much yet, but it was very good of him to come and see me⁠—and he was looking so handsome. He is going out somewhere this evening to some political meeting with two or three other men, and he was got up quite like a gentleman. I do like to see him look like that.”

“I always think a working man looks best in his working clothes,” said Lucy. “There’s some truth about him then. When he gets into a black coat he is pretending to be something else, but everybody can see the difference.”

There was a severity, almost a savageness in this, which surprised Sophy so much that at first she hardly knew how to answer it. “He is going to speak at the meeting,” she said after a pause. “And of course he had to make himself tidy. He told me all that he is going to say. Should you not like to hear him speak?”

“No,” said Lucy very sharply, setting to work instantly upon her labours, not giving herself a moment for preparation or a moment for rest. Why should she like to hear a man speak who could condescend to love so empty and so vain a thing as that? Then she became gradually ashamed of her own feelings. “Yes,” she said; “I think I should like to hear him speak;⁠—only if I were not quite so tired. Mr. Hall is a man of good sense, and well educated, and I think I should like to hear him speak.”

“I should like to hear him say one thing I know,” said Sophy. Then Lucy in her rage tore asunder some fragment of a garment on which she was working.

III

Sophy Wilson Goes to Hastings

Sophy went back to her work, and in a very few days was permanently moved from the seat which she had hitherto occupied next to Alec Murray and near to Lucy, to a distant part of the chamber in which the tinkling instruments were used. And as a part of the arrangement consequent on this she was called on to attend from ten till six instead of from noon till eight. And her hour for dining was changed also. In this way a great separation between the girls was made, for neither could they walk to the office together, nor walk from it. To Lucy, though she was sometimes inclined to be angry with her friend, this was very painful. But Sophy triumphed in it greatly. “I think we are to have a step up to 21s. in the musical box,” she said laughing. For it was so that she called the part of the room in which the little bells were always ringing. “Won’t it be nice to have 3s. 6d. instead of 3s.?” Lucy said solemnly that any increase of income was always nice, and that when such income was earned by superiority of acquirement it was a matter of just pride. This she enunciated with something of a dogmatic air; having schooled herself to give all due praise to Sophy, although it had to be given at the expense of her own feelings. But when Sophy said in reply that that was just what she had been thinking herself, and that as she could do her work by ear she was of course worth more than those who could not, then the other could only with difficulty repress the soreness of her heart.

But to Sophy I think the new arrangements were most pleasant because it enabled her to reach the street in which she lived just when Abraham Hall was accustomed to return from his work. He would generally come home⁠—to clean himself as she called it⁠—and would then again go out for his employment or amusement for the evening; and now, by a proper system of lying in wait, by creeping slow or walking quick, and by watching well, she was generally able to have a word or two with him. But he was so very bashful! He would always call her Miss Wilson; and she of course was obliged to call him Mr. Hall. “How is Miss Graham?” he asked one evening.

“She is very well. I think Lucy is always well. I never knew anybody so strong as she is.”

“It is a great blessing. And how are you yourself?”

“I do get so tired at that nasty