As I enter the club smoking-room you are to conceive David vanishing
into nothingness, and that it is any day six years ago at two in the
afternoon. I ring for coffee, cigarette, and cherry brandy, and take my
chair by the window, just as the absurd little nursery governess comes
tripping into the street. I always feel that I have rung for her.
While I am lifting the coffee-pot cautiously lest the lid fall into the
cup, she is crossing to the post-office; as I select the one suitable
lump of sugar she is taking six last looks at the letter; with the aid
of William I light my cigarette, and now she is re-reading the delicious
address. I lie back in my chair, and by this time she has dropped the
letter down the slit. I toy with my liqueur, and she is listening to
hear whether the postal authorities have come for her letter. I scowl at
a fellow-member who has had the impudence to enter the smoking-room, and
her two little charges are pulling her away from the post-office. When
I look out at the window again she is gone, but I shall ring for her
to-morrow at two sharp.
She must have passed the window many times before I noticed her. I know
not where she lives, though I suppose it to be hard by. She is taking
the little boy and girl, who bully her, to the St. James's Park, as
their hoops tell me, and she ought to look crushed and faded. No doubt
her mistress overworks her. It must enrage the other servants to see her
deporting herself as if she were quite the lady.
I noticed that she had sometimes other letters to post, but that
the posting of the one only was a process. They shot down the slit,
plebeians all, but it followed pompously like royalty. I have even seen
her blow a kiss after it.
Then there was her ring, of which she was as conscious as if it rather
than she was what came gaily down the street. She felt it through her
glove to make sure that it was still there. She took off the glove and
raised the ring to her lips, though I doubt not it was the cheapest
trinket. She viewed it from afar by stretching out her hand; she stooped
to see how it looked near the ground; she considered its effect on the
right of her and on the left of her and through one eye at a time. Even
when you saw that she had made up her mind to think hard of something
else, the little silly would take another look.