Part 58 (2/2)

”Besides spoiling everybody's day,” said Jane judiciously.

That brought Laura round. She reflected that, if she sat tight from ten that evening till two in the morning, she could save their day.

But first she had to finish her paragraph and then to hide it and lock it up. Then she put the pens and ink on a high shelf out of Mr.

Gunning's reach. He had been known to make away with the materials of Lolly's detestable occupation when he got the chance. He attributed to it that mysterious, irritating semblance of poverty in which they moved.

He smiled at her, a happy, innocent smile.

”_That's_ right, _that's_ right. Put it away, my dear, put it away.”

”Yes, Papa,” said Laura. She took the blouse from Addy Ranger, and she and Jane Holland disappeared with it into a small inner room. From the voices that came to him Prothero gathered that Jane Holland was ”b.u.t.toning her up the back.”

”Don't say,” cried Laura, ”that it won't meet!”

”Meet? It'll go twice round you. You don't eat enough.”

Silence.

”It's no good,” he heard Jane Holland say, ”not eating. I've tried both.”

”I,” said Laura in a voice that penetrated, ”over-eat. Habitually.”

”I must go,” said Mr. Gunning, ”and find my hat and stick.” His idea now was that Laura was going to take him for a walk.

Addy Ranger began to talk to Prothero. He liked Addy. She had an amusing face with a long nose and wide lips, restless and cynical. She confided to him the trouble of her life, the eternal difficulty of finding anywhere a permanent job. Addy's dream was permanence.

Then they talked of Laura.

”Do you know what _her_ dream is?” said Addy. ”To be able to afford wine, and chicken, and game and things--for him.”

”When you think of her work!” said Nina. ”It's charming; it's finished, to a point. How on earth does she do it?”

”She sits up half the night to do it,” said Prothero; ”when he isn't there.”

”And it's killing her,” said Addy, who had her back to the door.

Mr. Gunning had come in again and he heard her. He gazed at them with a vague sweetness, not understanding what he heard.

Then Laura ran in among them, in a tremendous hurry. She wasn't ready yet. It was a maddening, protracted agony, getting Laura off. She had forgotten to lock the cupboard where the whisky was (a s.h.i.+lling's worth in a medicine bottle); and poor Papa might find it. Since he had had his sunstroke you couldn't trust him with anything, not even with a jam-pot.

Then Addy, at Laura's request, rushed out of the room to find Laura's hat and her handkerchief and her gloves--not the ones with the holes in them. And then Laura looked at her hands.

”Oh,” she cried, ”_look_ at my poor hands. I can't go like that. I _hate_ an inky woman.”

And she dashed out to wash the ink off.

<script>