"Now, Elsie, you'd better be coming downstairs. There's nothing else up here to keep you."
As a fact, Elsie was dawdling, in reflection.
There was only one exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises--through the shop. Once a door had given direct access to King's Cross Road, but so long ago that the new bricks which had bricked it up were now scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding bricks. No one could have guessed at a glance that the main façade of the building had been shifted round, for some reason lost in antiquity, from King's Cross Road to Riceyman Steps; or that the little oblong, railing-enclosed strip of grass, which was never cut nor clipped nor trodden by human foot, had once been a "front garden." The back parts of T. T. Riceyman's provided no escape save through a little yard, over high brick walls, into the back parts of other properties inhabited by unknown and probably pernickety persons and their children.
As there was only the shop exit from the T. T. Riceyman premises, it could not be concealed from the powers that Elsie went forth that same afternoon dressed in her best. Unusual array, for the girl generally began half-holidays by helping her friends, to whom she was very faithful, in Riceyman Square, either by skilled cleansing labour in the unclean dirty house or, as occasion might demand, by taking children out for an excursion into the more romantic leafy regions of Clerkenwell up towards the north-east, such as Myddelton Square, where there was room to play and opportunity for tumbling about in pleasant outdoor dirt. Mrs. Earlforward nodded to Elsie as she departed, and Elsie blushed, smiling. But Mrs. Earlforward asked no curious question, friendly or inquisitive. She knew her place, as Elsie knew Elsie's. She knew that it was not "wise" to meddle. Servants must do what they liked with their own; they were mighty independent, even the best of them, these days. Not a word, save on household matters, had passed between the two women since the scene of the morning. Mr. Earlforward was still dealing with customers in the office; his voice, rather enfeebled, seemed blander than ever.
"I hope it will be fine for you," Violet called after Elsie at the shop-door. Wonderful, the implications in the tone of that briefly-expressed amiability! It was as if Violet had said: "I know you're up to something out of the ordinary. I don't know what it is, and I don't seek to inquire. I believe in people minding their own business. But you might have given me a hint, and anyhow I can see through you, though you mayn't think it. Anyhow, in spite of the cold wind and the big moving clouds, I hope you won't be inconvenienced in your very private affairs by the weather."