of five months if they had not felt she was worth it. … It would make all the difference to the summer. Hopefully she took a loose sheet of paper and made two lists of the four pages of the week’s entries—dissecting them under the heads of workshop and surgery. About fifteen pounds had been spent. Again and again with heating head she added her pages of small sums, getting each time slightly different results, until at last they balanced with the dissected lists—twice in succession. The hall clock struck one and
Mr. Leyton came downstairs rattling and rattled into her room. “How d’you like this get up?” The general effect of the blue grey uniform and brown leather belt and bandolier was pleasing. “Oh,
jolly,” she said abstractedly to his waiting figure. He clattered downstairs to lunch.
Everybody had outside interests.
Mr. Hancock would be on the Broads by now. Her afternoon beckoned, easy with the superfluity of money. Anxiously she counted over the balance in the cash box. It was two and ninepence short. Damnation. Damnation. “Put it down to stamps—or miscellanea; not accounted for.” She looked back through her entries. Stamps, one pound, at the beginning of the week. Stamps, ten shillings yesterday. It could not be that. It was some carelessness—something not entered—or a miscalculation. Something she had paid out to the workshop in the middle of a rush and forgotten to put down. She went back through her entries one by one with flaring cheeks; recovering the history of the week and recalling incidents. Nothing came that would account for the discrepancy. It was simply a mistake. Something had been put down wrong. The money had been spent. But was it a workshop or a surgery expense that had gone wrong? “Postage
etc.: two and nine,” would make it all right—but the account would not be right. Either the workshop or the surgery account must suffer. It would be another of those little inaccurate spots that came every few weeks; that she would always have to remember … her mind toiled, goaded and hot. …
Mr. Orly had borrowed five pounds to buy tools at Buck and Hickman’s and come back with the money spent and some of the tools to be handed to the practice. Perhaps it was in balancing that up that the mistake had occurred … or the electric lamp account; some for the house, some for the practice and some for the workshop. Thoroughly miserable she made a provisional entry of the sum against surgery in pencil and left the account unbalanced. Perhaps on Monday it would come right. When the ledgers were all in place and the safe and drawers locked she stretched her limbs and forced away her misery. The roses reproached her, but only for a moment. They understood, in detail, as clearly as she did, all the difficulties. They took her part. Standing there waiting, they too felt that there was nothing now but lunch and Irving.
With the basket of roses over her arm she walked as rapidly as possible down to Oxford Circus taking the first turning out of Wimpole Street to hurry the more secretly and conveniently. A bus took her to Charing Cross where she jumped off as soon as it began pulling up and ran down the Strand. As soon as she felt herself flying towards her bourne the fears that last week’s magic would have disappeared left her altogether. Last week had been wonderful, an adventure her first deliberate piece of daring in London. Inside the theatre the scruples and the daring had been forgotten. Today again everything would be forgotten, everything; today’s happiness was more secure; it would not mean going almost foodless over the weekend and without an egg for supper all next week; there was no anticipation of disapproving eyes in the theatre this week; the sense of the impropriety of going alone had gone; it would never return; the feeling of selfishness in spending money on a theatre alone was still there, but a voice within answered that—saying that there was no one at hand to go and no one she knew who would find at the Lyceum performance just what she found, no one to whom it would mean much more than a theatre; like any other theatre and a play, amongst other plays, with a celebrated actor taking the chief part … except Mag. Mag had been with her as she gazed. Mag was with her now. Mag, fulfilling one or other of her exciting Saturday afternoon engagements would sit at her side.
Easy and happy she fled along … her heart greeting each passenger in the scattered throng she threaded, her eyes upon the traffic in the roadway. A horseless brougham went by, moving smoothly and silently amongst the noisy traffic—the driver looked as though he were fastened to the front of the vehicle, a little tin driver on a clockwork toy; there was nothing between him and the road but the platform of the little tank on which his feet were set. He looked as if he were falling off. If anything ran into him there was nothing to protect him. It left an uncomfortable memory … it would only be for carriages; the well-loved horse omnibuses would go on … it must be somewhere near here … “Lyceum Pit,” there it was, just ahead, easily discernible. Last week when she had had to ask, she had not noticed the words printed on the side of the passage that showed as you came down the Strand. The pavement was clear for a moment and she rounded the near angle and ran home down the passage without slackening her pace, her half-crown ready in her hand, a Lyceum pittite.
The dark pit seemed very full as she entered the door at the left hand corner; dim forms standing at the back told her there were no seats left; but she made her way across to the right and down the incline hoping for a neglected place
