When she had at last decided what concerts she would be obliged to miss, paid her subscription to the League for the Suppression of Tinned Milk, and accepted an invitation to watch a man fall from a balloon, she paused. Then, dipping her pen in ink, she wrote as follows:
“Mrs. Stephen Dallison would be glad to have the blue dress ordered by her yesterday sent home at once without alteration.--Messrs. Rose and Thorn, High Street, Kensington.”
Ringing the bell, she thought: 'It will be a job for Mrs. Hughs, poor thing. I believe she'll do it quite as well as Rose and Thorn.'--“Would you please ask Mrs. Hughs to come to me?--Oh, is that you, Mrs. Hughs? Come in.”
The seamstress, who had advanced into the middle of the room, stood with her worn hands against her sides, and no sign of life but the liquid patience in her large brown eyes. She was an enigmatic figure. Her presence always roused a sort of irritation in Cecilia, as if she had been suddenly confronted with what might possibly have been herself if certain little accidents had omitted to occur. She was so conscious that she ought to sympathise, so anxious to show that there was no barrier between them, so eager to be all she ought to be, that her voice almost purred.
“Are you Getting on with the curtains, Mrs. Hughs?”
“I shall have another job for you to-morrow--altering a dress. Can you come?”
'It's no good talking of her domestic matters,' thought Cecilia; 'not that I don't care!' But the silence getting on her nerves, she said quickly: “Is your husband behaving himself better?”
There was no answer; Cecilia saw a tear trickle slowly down the woman's cheek.
'Oh dear, oh dear,' she thought; 'poor thing! I'm in for it!'
Mrs. Hughs' whispering voice began: “He's behaving himself dreadful, m'm. I was going to speak to you. It's ever since that young girl”--her face hardened--“come to live down in my room there; he seem to--he seem to--just do nothing but neglect me.”
Cecilia's heart gave the little pleasurable flutter which the heart must feel at the love dramas of other people, however painful.
The seamstress answered in an agitated voice: “I don't want to speak against her, but she's put a spell on him, that's what she has; he don't seem able to do nothing but talk of her, and hang about her room. It was that troubling me when I saw you the other day. And ever since yesterday midday, when Mr. Hilary came--he's been talking that wild--and he pushed me--and--and---” Her lips ceased to form articulate words, but, since it was not etiquette to cry before her superiors, she used them to swallow down her tears, and something in her lean throat moved up and down.