Drawing near to Queen's Road—the wrapped-up Keble in her hand—she began to wonder whether Miss Nunn would have any serious proposal to offer. Virginia's report and ecstatic forecasts were, she knew, not completely trustworthy; though more than ten years her sister's junior, Monica saw the world with eyes much less disposed to magnify and colour ordinary facts.
Miss Barfoot was still from home. Rhoda Nunn received the visitor in a pleasant, old-fashioned drawing-room, where there was nothing costly, nothing luxurious; yet to Monica it appeared richly furnished. A sense of strangeness amid such surroundings had more to do with her constrained silence for the first few minutes than the difficulty with which she recognized in this lady before her the Miss Nunn whom she had known years ago.
'I should never have known you,' said Rhoda, equally surprised. 'For one thing, you look like a fever patient just recovering. What can be expected? Your sister gave me a shocking account of how you live.'
'The work is very hard.'
'Preposterous. Why do you stay at such a place, Monica?'
'I am getting experience.'
'To be used in the next world?'
They laughed.
'Miss Madden is better to-day, I hope?'
'Alice? Not much, I'm sorry to say.'
'Will you tell me something more about the "experience" you are getting? For instance, what time is given you for meals?'
Rhoda Nunn was not the person to manufacture light gossip when a matter of the gravest interest waited for discussion. With a face that expressed thoughtful sympathy, she encouraged the girl to speak and confide in her.
'There's twenty minutes for each meal,' Monica explained; 'but at dinner and tea one is very likely to be called into the shop before finishing. If you are long away you find the table cleared.'
'Charming arrangement! No sitting down behind the counter, I suppose?'
'Oh, of course not. We suffer a great deal from that. Some of us get diseases. A girl has just gone to the hospital with varicose veins, and two or three others have the same thing in a less troublesome form. Sometimes, on Saturday night, I lose all feeling in my feet; I have to stamp on the floor to be sure it's still under me.'
'Ah, that Saturday night!'
'Yes, it's bad enough now; but at Christmas! There was a week or more of Saturday night—going on to one o'clock in the morning. A girl by me was twice carried out fainting, one night after another. They gave her brandy, and she came back again.'
'They compelled her to?'
'Well, no, it was her own wish. Her "book of takings" wasn't very good, poor thing, and if it didn't come up to a certain figure at the end of the week she would lose her place. She lost it after all. They told her she was too weak. After Christmas she was lucky enough to get a place as a lady's-maid at twenty-five pounds a year—at Scotcher's she had fifteen. But we heard that she burst a blood-vessel, and now she's in the hospital at Brompton.'
'Delightful story! Haven't you an early-closing day?'
'They had before I went there; but only for about three months. Then the agreement broke down.'
'Like the assistants. A pity the establishment doesn't follow suit.'
'But you wouldn't say so, Miss Nunn, if you knew how terribly hard it is for many girls to find a place, even now.'
'I know it perfectly well. And I wish it were harder. I wish girls fell down and died of hunger in the streets, instead of creeping to their garrets and the hospitals. I should like to see their dead bodies collected together in some open place for the crowd to stare at.'
Monica gazed at her with wide eyes.
'You mean, I suppose, that people would try to reform things.'
'Who knows? Perhaps they might only congratulate each other that a few of the superfluous females had been struck off. Do they give you any summer holiday?'
'A week, with salary continued.'
'Really? With salary continued? That takes one's breath away.—Are many of the girls ladies?'
'None, at Scotcher's. They nearly all come from the country. Several are daughters of small farmers and those are dreadfully ignorant. One of them asked me the other day in what country Africa was.'
'You don't find them very pleasant company?'
'One or two are nice quiet girls.'
Rhoda drew a deep sigh, and moved with impatience.
'Well, don't you think you've had about enough of it—experience and all?'
'I might go into a country business: it would be easier.'
'But you don't care for the thought?'
'I wish now they had brought me up to something different. Alice and Virginia were afraid of having me trained for a school; you remember that one of our sisters who went through it died of overwork. And I'm not clever, Miss Nunn. I never did much at school.'
Rhoda regarded her, smiling gently.
'You have no inclination to study now?'
'I'm afraid not,' replied the other, looking away. 'Certainly I should like to be better educated, but I don't think I could study seriously, to earn my living by it. The time for that has gone by.'
'Perhaps so. But there are things you might manage. No doubt your sister told you how I get my living. There's a good deal of employment for women who learn to use a typewriter. Did you ever have piano lessons?'
'No.'
'No more did I, and I was sorry for it when I went to typewriting. The fingers have to be light and supple and quick. Come with me, and I'll show you one of the machines.'
They went to a room downstairs—a bare little room by the library. Here were two Remingtons, and Rhoda patiently explained their use.
'One must practise until one can do fifty words a minute at least. I know one or two people who have reached almost twice that speed. It takes a good six months' work to learn for any profitable use. Miss Barfoot takes pupils.'
Monica, at first very attentive, was growing absent. Her eyes wandered about the room. The other observed her closely, and, it seemed, doubtfully.
'Do you feel any impulse to try for it?'
'I should have to live for six months without earning anything.'
'That is by no means impossible for you, I think?'
'Not really impossible,' Monica replied with hesitation.
Something like dissatisfaction passed over Miss Nunn's face, though she did not allow Monica to see it. Her lips moved in a way that perhaps signified disdain for such timidity. Tolerance was not one of the virtues expressed in her physiognomy.
'Let us go back to the drawing-room and have some tea.'
Monica could not become quite at ease. This energetic woman had little attraction for her. She saw the characteristics which made Virginia enthusiastic, but feared rather than admired them. To put herself in Miss Nunn's hands might possibly result in a worse form of bondage than she suffered at the shop; she would never be able to please such a person, and failure, she imagined, would result in more or less contemptuous dismissal.
Then of a sudden, as it she had divined these thoughts, Rhoda assumed an air of gaiety of frank kindness.
'So it is your birthday? I no longer keep count of mine, and couldn't tell you without a calculation what I am exactly. It doesn't matter, you see. Thirty-one or fifty-one is much the same for a