Miriam stood holding the little group in her hands longing for words. She could only smile and smile. The young man stood by looking at it and smiling, too, giving his attention to Miss Szigmondy’s questions about some larger white things standing in the bare room. When he moved away towards these and she could leave off wondering whether it would do to say “and is this really going to the Academy next week” instead of again repeating “how beautiful,” and her eye could run undisturbed over and over the outlines of the two horses, impressions crowded upon her. The thing moved and changed as she looked at it; it seemed as if it must break away, burst out of her hands into the surrounding atmosphere. Everything about took on a happy familiarity, as if she had long been in the bright bare plaster-filled little room. From the edges of the small white group a radiance spread freshening the air, flowing out into the happy world, flowing back over the afternoon, bringing parts of it to stand out like great fresh bright Academy pictures. The great studios opening out within the large garden-draped Hampstead houses rich and bright with colour in a golden light, their fur rugs and tea services on silver trays, and velvet coated men, wives with trailing dresses and the people standing about, at once conspicuous and lost, were like Academy pictures. It was all real now, the pictures on the great easels, scraps of the Academy blaze; the studio with the bright light, and marble, and bright clear tiger skins on the floor, the big clean fresh tiger almost filling the canvas … the dark studio with antique furniture and pictures of people standing about in historical clothes. …
“Goodness gracious, isn’t she a swell!”
“Are they all right?”
“Are you a millionaire my dear? Have they raised your salary?”
“Do you really like them?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen you look so nice. You ought always to go about in a large black hat trimmed with lilac.”
“Didn’t one of the artists want to paint your portrait.”
“They all did. I’ve promised at least twenty sittings.”
“Come nearer to the lamp fair child that I may be even more dazzled by thy splendour.”
“I’m awfully glad you like them—they’ll have to go on forever.”
“Where on earth did you find the money child?”
“Borrowed it from Harry. It was her idea. You see I shall get four pounds for my four weeks’ holiday; and if I go to stay with them it won’t cost me anything; so she advanced me two pounds.”
“And you got all this for two pounds?”
“Practically; the hat was ten and six and the other things twenty seven and six and the gloves half a crown.”
“Where did you get them?”
“Edgware Road.”
“And just put them on?”
“It is really remarkable. Do you realise how lucky you are in being a stock size?”
“I suppose I am. But you know the awful thing about it is that they will never come in for Wimpole Street.”
“Why on earth not? What could be more ladylike, more—simple, more altogether suitable?”
“You see I have to wear black there.”
“What an extraordinary idea. Why?”
“Well they asked me to. I don’t know. I believe it’s the fault of my predecessor. They told me she rustled and wore all kinds of dresses—”
“I see—a series of explosions.”
“On silk foundations.”
“But why should they assume that you would do the same?”
“I don’t know. It’s an awful nuisance. You can’t get black blouses that will wash; it will be awful in the summer; besides it’s so unbecoming.”
“There I can’t agree. It would be for me. It makes me look dingy; but it suits you, throws up your rose-leaf complexion and your golden hair. But I call it jolly hard lines. I’d like to see the governor dictating to me what I should wear.”
“It’s so expensive if one can’t wear out one’s best things.”
“It’s intolerable. Why do you stand it?”
“What can I do?”
“Tell them you must either wear scarlet at the office or have a higher screw.”
“It isn’t an office you see. I have to be so much in the surgeries and interviewing people in the waiting-room, you know.”
“Yes—from dukes to dustmen. But would either the dukes or the dustmen disapprove of scarlet?”
“One has to be a discreet nobody. It’s the professional world; you don’t understand; you are equals, you two, superiors, pampered countesses in your offices.”
“Well I think it’s a beastly shame. I should brandish a pair of forceps at Mr. Hancock and say ‘scarlet—or I leave.’ ”
“Where should I go? I have no qualifications.”
“You wouldn’t leave. They would say ‘Miss Henderson, wear purple and yellow, only stay.’ I think it’s a reflection on her taste, don’t you Jan?”
“Certainly it is. It is fiendish. But employers are fiends—to women.”
“I haven’t found that soh.”
“Ah you keep yours in order, you rule them with a rod of iron.”
“I do. I believe in it.”
“I envy you your late hours in the morning.”
“Ah-ha—she’s had a row about that.”
“Have you Mag?”
“Not a row; simply a discussion.”
“What happened?”
“Simply this. The governor begged me—almost in tears—to come down earlier—for the sake of the discipline of the office.”
“What did you say?”
“I said Herr Epstein; what can I do? How do you suppose I can get up, have breakfast and be down here before eleven?”
“What did he say?”
“He protested and implored and offered to pay cabs for me.”
“Good Lord, Mag, you are extraordinary.”
“I am not extraordinary and it is no concern of the Deity’s. I fail to see why I should get to the office earlier than I do. I don’t get my letters before half-past eleven. I am fresh and gay and rested, I get through my work before closing-time. I work like anything whilst I am there.”
“And you still go down at eleven?”
“I still go down at eleven.”
“I do envy you. You see my people always want me most first thing in the morning.
