“Sister North sported a swell new blouse,” said Miss Dear in clear intimate tones as she paused in the hall to take up her umbrella.
“I hope it won’t rain,” said Miriam formally, opening the front door.
“She was no end of a swell,” pursued Miss Dear, hitching her cloak and skirt from her heels with a neat cuffed gloved hand, quirked compactly against her person just under her waist and turned so that her elbow and forearm made a small compact angle against her person. She spoke over her shoulder, her form slenderly poised forward to descend the steps; “I told her she would knock them.” She was aglow with the afternoon sunlight streaming down the street.
Miriam spoke as she stepped down with delicate plunges. She did not hear and paused turning on the last step.
“It was too bad of you,” shouted Miriam smiling “to leave my sister alone at the Decayed Gentlewomen’s.”
“I couldn’t help myself,” gleamed Miss Dear. “My time was up.”
“Did you hate being there?”
Miss Dear hung, poised and swaying to some inner breeze. Miriam gazed, waiting for her words, watching the inturned eyes control the sweet lips flowering for speech.
“It was rather comical”—the eyes came round, clear pure blue;—“until your sister came.” The tall slender figure faced the length of the street; the long thin blue cloak flickering all over gave Miriam a foresight of the coming swift hesitating conversational progress of the figure along the pavement, the poise of the delicate surmounting head, slightly bent, the pure brow foremost, shading the lowered thoughtful eyes, the clear little rounded dip of the chin indrawn.
“I’m glad she gave me your address,” finished Miss Dear a little furrow running along her brow in control of the dimpling flushed oval below it. “I’ll say au revoir and not goodbye for the present.”
“Goodbye,” flung Miriam stiffly at the departing face. Shutting the neglected door she hurried back through the hall and resumed her consciousness of Wimpole Street with angry, eager swiftness. … Eve, getting mixed up with people … it is right … she would not have been angry if I had asked her to be nice to somebody. … I did not mean to do anything … I was proud of having the tickets to send … if I had not sent them I should have had the thought of all those nurses, longing for something to do between cases. They are just the people for the Students Concerts … if she comes again. … “I can’t have social life, unfortunately,” how furious I shall feel saying that “you see I’m so fearfully full up—lectures every night and I’m away every week end … and I’m not supposed to see people here—”
XXIX
Miriam had no choice but to settle herself on the cane-seated chair. When Miss Dear had drawn the four drab coloured curtains into place the small cubicle was in semidarkness.
“I hope the next time you come to tea with me it will be under rather more comfortable circumstances.”
“This is all right,” said Miriam in abstracted impatient continuation of her abounding manner. Miss Dear was arranging herself on the bed as if for a long sitting. The small matter of business would come now. Having had tea it would be impossible to depart the moment the discussion was over. How much did the tea cost here? That basement tearoom, those excited young women and middle-aged women watchful and stealthy and ugly with poverty and shifts, those teapots and shabby trays and thick bread and butter were like the Y.W.C.A. public restaurant at the other end of the street—fourpence at the outside; but Miss Dear would have to pay it. She felt trapped … “a few moments of your time to advise me” and now half the summer twilight had gone and she was pinned in this prison face to face with anything Miss Dear might choose to present; forced by the presences audible in the other cubicles to a continuation of her triumphant tearoom manner.
“You must excuse my dolly.” She arranged her skirt neatly about the ankle of the slippered bandaged foot.
Anyone else would say what is the matter with your foot. … It stuck out, a dreadfully padded mass, dark in the darkness of the dreadful little enclosure in the dreadful dark hive of women, collected together only by poverty.
“Have you left your association?”
“Oh no, de‑er; not permanently of course,” said Miss Dear pausing in her tweakings and adjustments of draperies to glance watchfully through the gloom.
“I’m still a member there.”
“Oh yes.”
“But I’ve got to look after myself. They don’t give you a chance.”
“No—”
“It’s rush in and rush out and rush in and rush out.”
“What are you going to do? … what do you want with me. …”
“What do you mean de‑er.”
“Well I mean, are you going on nursing.”
“Of course de‑er. I was going to tell you.”
Miriam’s restive anger would not allow her to attend fully to the long story. She wandered off with the dreadful idea of nursing a “semi-mental” sitting in a deck-chair in a country garden, the hopeless patient, the nurse half intent on a healthy life and fees for herself, and recalled the sprinkling of uniformed figures amongst the women crowded at the table, all in this dilemma, all eagerly intent; all overworked by associations claiming part of their fees or taking the risks of private nursing, all getting older; all anyhow as long as they went on nursing bound to live on illness; to live with illness knowing that they were living on it. Yet Mr. Leyton had said that no hospital run by a religious sisterhood was any good … these women were run by doctors. …
“You see de‑er it’s the best thing any sensible nurse can do as soon as she knows a sufficient number of influenchoo peopoo—physicians and others.”
“Yes, I see.” … But what has all this to do with me. …
“I shall keep in correspondence with my doctors and friends and look after myself a bit.”
“Yes, I see,” said Miriam eagerly. “It’s
