“No, not to Blackstable,” Rosie smiled. “I don’t know that I’d care to
go there just yet. To Haversham. Mother comes over to meet me. I stay at
the hotel where I used to work.”
She was never a great talker. Often when, the night being fine, we
decided to walk back from the music hall at which we had been spending
the evening, she never opened her mouth. But her silence was intimate
and comfortable. It did not exclude you from thoughts that engaged her
apart from you; it included you in a pervasive well-being.
I was talking about her once to Lionel Hillier and I said to him that I
could not understand how she had turned from the fresh pleasant-looking
young woman I had first known at Blackstable into the lovely creature
whose beauty now practically everyone acknowledged. (There were people
who made reservations. “Of course she has a very good figure,” they
said, “but it’s not the sort of face I very much admire personally.” And
others said: “Oh, yes, of course, a very pretty woman; but it’s a pity
she hasn’t a little more distinction.”)
“I can explain that to you in half a jiffy,” said Lionel Hillier. “She
was only a fresh, buxom wench when you first met her. _I_ made her
beauty.”