hesitated; but the lesson was over; another pupil was coming. She glanced round the room. There was a plate of oranges on the top of a pile of shiny exercise-books: a box that looked as if it contained biscuits. Was this her only room, she wondered? Did she sleep on the lumpy-looking sofa with the shawl thrown over it? There was no looking-glass, and she stuck her hat on rather to one side, thinking as she did so that Miss Craddock despised clothes.
But Miss Craddock was thinking how wonderful it was to be young and lovely and to meet brilliant men.
“I’m going to tea with the Robsons,” said Kitty, holding out her hand. The girl, Nelly Robson, was Miss Craddock’s favourite pupil; the only girl, she used to say, who knew what work meant.
“Are you walking?” said Miss Craddock, looking at her clothes. “It’s some way, you know. Down Ringmer Road, past the gasworks.”
“Yes, I’m walking,” said Kitty, shaking hands.
“And I will try to work hard this week,” she said, looking down on her with eyes full of love and admiration. Then she descended the steep stairs whose oilcloth shone bright with romance; and glanced at the umbrella that had a parrot for handle.
The son of the Professor, who had done it all off his own bat, “a most creditable performance”, to quote Dr. Malone, was mending the hen coops in the back garden at Prestwich Terrace—a scratched up little place. Hammer, hammer, hammer, he went, fixing a board to the rotten roof. His hands were white, unlike his father’s, and long fingered too. He had no love of doing these jobs himself. But his father mended the boots on Sunday. Down came the hammer. He went at it, hammering the long shiny nails that sometimes split the wood, or drove outside. For it was rotten. He hated hens too, imbecile fowls, a huddle of feathers, watching him out of their red beady eyes. They scratched up the path; left little curls of feather here and there on the beds, which were more to his fancy. But nothing grew there. How grow flowers like other people if one kept hens? A bell rang.
“Curse it! There’s some old woman come to tea,” he said, holding his hammer suspended; and then brought it down on the nail.
As she stood on the step, noting the cheap lace curtains and the blue and orange glass, Kitty tried to remember what it was that her father had said about Nelly’s father. But a little maid let her in. I’m much too large, Kitty thought, as she stood for a moment in the room to which the maid had admitted her. It was a small room, crowded with objects. And I’m too well dressed she thought, looking at herself in the glass over the fireplace. But here her friend Nelly came in. She was dumpy; over her large grey eyes she wore steel spectacles, and her brown holland overall seemed to increase her air of uncompromising veracity.
“We’re having tea in the back room,” she said, looking her up and down. What has she been doing? Why is she dressed in an overall? Kitty thought, following her into the room where tea had already begun.
“Pleased to see you,” said Mrs Robson formally, looking over her shoulder. But nobody seemed in the least pleased to see her. Two children were already eating. Slices of bread and butter were in their hands, but they stayed the bread and butter and stared at Kitty as she sat down.
She seemed to see the whole room at once. It was bare yet crowded. The table was too large; there were hard green-plush chairs; yet the table-cloth was coarse; darned in the middle; and the china was cheap with its florid red roses. The light was extraordinarily bright in her eyes. A sound of hammering came in from the garden outside. She looked at the garden; it was a scratched-up, earthy garden without flower-beds; and there was a shed at the end of the garden from which the sound of hammering came.
They’re all so short too, Kitty thought, glancing at Mrs Robson. Only her shoulders came above the tea things; but her shoulders were substantial. She was a little like Bigge, the cook at the Lodge, but more formidable. She gave one brief look at Mrs Robson and then began to pull off her gloves secretly, swiftly, under the cover of the table-cloth. But why does nobody talk? she thought nervously. The children kept their eyes fixed upon her with a look of solemn amazement. Their owl-like stare went up and down over her uncompromisingly. Happily before they could express their disapproval, Mrs Robson told them sharply to go on with their tea; and the bread and butter slowly rose to their mouths again.
Why don’t they say something? Kitty thought again, glancing at Nelly. She was about to speak when an umbrella grated in the hall; and Mrs Robson looked up and said to her daughter:
“There’s Dad!”
Next moment in trotted a little man, who was so short that he looked as if his jacket should have been an Eton jacket, and his collar a round collar. He wore, too, a very thick watch-chain, made of silver, like a schoolboy’s. But his eyes were keen and fierce, his moustache bristly, and he spoke with a curious accent.
“Pleased to see you,” he said, and gripped her hand hard in his. He sat down, tucked a napkin under his chin so that it obscured his heavy silver watch-chain under its stiff white shield. Hammer, hammer, hammer came from the shed in the garden.
“Tell Jo tea’s on the table,” said Mrs Robson to Nelly, who had brought in a dish with a cover on it. The cover was removed. Actually they were going to eat fried fish and potatoes at tea-time, Kitty remarked.
But Mr Robson had turned his rather alarming blue eyes upon her. She expected him to say, “How is your father, Miss Malone?”
But he said:
“You’re reading history with Lucy Craddock?”
“Yes,” she said. She liked the way he said Lucy Craddock, as if he respected her. So many of the Dons sneered at her. She liked feeling too, as he made her feel, that she was nobody’s daughter in particular.
“You’re interested in history?” he said, applying himself to his fish and potatoes.
“I love it,” she said. His bright blue eyes, gazing straight at her rather fiercely, seemed to make her say quite shortly what she meant.
“But I’m frightfully lazy,” she added. Here Mrs Robson looked at her rather sternly, and handed her a thick slice of bread on the point of a knife.
Anyhow their taste is awful, she said by way of revenge for the snub that she felt was intended. She focussed her eyes on a picture opposite—an oily landscape in a heavy gilt frame. There was a blue and red Japanese plate on either side of it. Everything was ugly, especially the pictures.
“The moor at the back of our house,” said Mr Robson, seeing her look at a picture.
It struck Kitty that the accent with which he spoke was a Yorkshire accent. In looking at the picture he had increased his accent.
“In Yorkshire?” she said. “We come from there too. My mother’s family I mean,” she added.
“Your mother’s family?” said Mr Robson.
“Rigby,” she said, and blushed slightly.
“Rigby?” said Mrs Robson, looking up.
“I wur-r-rked for a Miss Rigby before I married.”
What sort of wur-r-rk had Mrs Robson done? Kitty wondered. Sam explained.
“My wife was a cook, Miss Malone, before we married,” he said. Again he increased his accent as if he were proud of it. I had a great-uncle who rode in a circus, she felt inclined to say: and an Aunt who married … but here Mrs Robson interrupted her.
“The Hollies,” she said. “Two very old ladies; Miss Ann and Miss Matilda.” She spoke more gently.
“But they must be dead long ago,” she concluded. For the first time she leant back in her chair and stirred her tea, just as old Snap at the farm, Kitty thought, stirred her tea round and round and round.
“Tell Jo we’re not sparing the cake,” said Mr Robson, cutting himself a slice of that craggy-looking object; and Nell went out of the room once more. The hammering stopped in the garden. The door opened. Kitty, who had altered the focus of her eyes to suit the smallness