"See how I prove that I can refuse you nothing! See what follies I will perpetrate to please you!"
Then the shop-door shook, and the next instant there was a respectful tap-tap on it. Violet ran like a girl.
"Elsie, you know perfectly well you ought to have taken the key with you."
"You've been a long time, Elsie. We couldn't think what had happened to you!" added Violet, locking the door finally for the night.
"I couldn't get no paper, 'm," Elsie explained. "I had to go down nearly to the Viaduct before I could get one. And now it isn't the _Evening Standard_--it's the _Star_. They were all sold out, 'm."
She advanced towards the office, and in her deferential hands the white newspaper became the document of some mysterious and solemn message to the waiting master. Her demeanour, indeed, showed that she knew it to be such. She had not been reading the paper--that, somehow, for her, would have been to pry--but as she passed under the sole gas-lamp of Riceyman Steps she had by accident noticed one word on the _Star's_ front page. That word was "Clerkenwell." Something terrible had been occurring in Clerkenwell. Mr. Earlforward, whose habits she knew well, must have seen a reference to Clerkenwell on the _Evening Standard's_ poster on his way home, and after careful reflection he had decided to buy a copy of the paper.
"Wait a moment! Wait a moment!" said Mr. Earlforward to Elsie as she turned to leave the office. Elsie stood still. Violet sat on the chair behind the desk. Mr. Earlforward maintained his position by the fire, and created expectancy.
"'Further slump in the franc,'" he read, his eye negligently wandering over the paper.
Elsie had not the least idea what this meant or signified. Violet was by no means sure of its import, but she knew positively that it was bad news for decent investing persons.
Happily Elsie did not even know what a franc was; but whatever a franc might be she vaguely wondered in the almost primeval night of her brain how its performances could be actuated by such a feeling as sympathy. For Violet the financial situation grew still gloomier.
"'Over a million doomed to starvation in the Volga region.' That's communism, I'd like you to know; that's the result of communism, that is," observed Mr. Earlforward, looking over his glasses and including both women in an equal glance. "That's what communism leads to. And what it must lead to wherever it's tried."