"Amory!" she called loudly. "Where are you?"
The last words were superfluous, since (unless she had climbed out of the long front casement and on to the gutter) it was not possible for Miss Towers to be in hiding in the room. And out of the square aperture at the back, that commanded a view of washing, weeds, discarded bottles, the greengrocer's "empties" and the back gardens of the west side of Oakley Street, she could not as much as have got her head. Nor did Miss Lennard wait for an answer. Down the chimney opposite the door there came a dense yellow cauliflower of smoke; Miss Lennard hastily closed the door again; and then, first looking for a moment this way and that, she strode to a black-and-white desk near the long casement and began to turn over the litter upon it. This, which was a foot and more high, consisted of magazines and ladies' journals and tracing-paper and proofs, and it was surmounted, first, by a plate with a couple of bananas and a half-eaten bunch of grapes upon it, and secondly, by a glass of water, clear above, cloudy in the middle, and with a thick reddish sediment at the bottom. As she sought, Miss Lennard popped three or four grapes into her large O of a mouth, throwing the skins towards the fireplace, from which another opaque yellow cauliflower poured, though this time not quite so far out into the room. She had removed her gloves; her hands were large and firm and waxen and without rings; and one or other of them found its way of itself to the grapes while the other continued its search.
The smoking of the chimney had blackened the ceiling, which bellied downwards in the middle like the under side of a giant's mattress; and it had also dimmed the surfaces of such of the brighter objects of furniture as the cheap working-room contained--the picture-glasses, the gate-legged table, a bowl full of dead daffodils, and some crockery. But Miss Lennard and Miss Towers frequently said that it was not for the inside of the room, but for the sake of the views from the long lattice in front, that they had chosen the place. These were for ever changing and charming. From a standpoint just within the door you looked over the Embankment Gardens and saw, through trees, lighters following the bullying tugs, or barges, their sails reefed to the sprits, resembling tall attenuated figures in the act of grasping punting-poles. Placing yourself in the middle of the worn floor you saw, crossed out as it were by the middle lattice, the Chelsea Jelly Factory and other buildings across the river. And standing quite by the fireplace you saw the lacy lines of the Suspension Bridge and the low grey-green trees of Battersea Park. As the chimney emitted more yellow curds, Miss Lennard, with an "Ugh!" opened the middle section of this window. The papers among which she had been searching were instantly whisked across the floor.