But with a blink of one eye and a shake of its forepaw, as if
inadvertently it had trodden in water, it turned itself about again and
disappeared. In spite of all my cajoleries, Henry and I were never to be
friends.
Whatever Pollie's trouble with the cabman may have been, Mrs Bowater
made short work of it. Pollie was shown to the room in which she was to
sleep that night. I took off my bodice and bathed face, hands, and arms
to the elbow in the shallow bowl Mrs Bowater had provided for me. And
soon, wonderfully refreshed and talkative, Pollie and I were seated over
the last meal we were to share together for many a long day.
There were snippets of bread and butter for me, a little omelette, two
sizes too large, a sugared cherry or two sprinkled with "hundreds and
thousands," and a gay little bumper of milk gilded with the enwreathed
letters, "A Present from Dover." Alack-a-day for that omelette! I must
have kept a whole family of bantams steadily engaged for weeks together.
But I was often at my wits' end to dispose of their produce. Fortunately
Mrs Bowater kept merry fires burning in the evening--"Ladies of some
sizes can't warm the air as much as most," as she put it. So at some
little risk to myself among the steel fire-irons, the boiled became the
roast. At last I made a clean breast of my horror of eggs, and since by
that time my landlady and I were the best of friends, no harm came of
it. She merely bestowed on me a grim smile of unadulterated amusement,
and the bantams patronized some less fastidious stomach.
My landlady was a heavy thinker, and not a copious--though a
leisurely--talker. Minutes would pass, while with dish or duster in hand
she pondered a speech; then perhaps her long thin lips would only shut a
little tighter, or a slow, convulsive rub of her lean forefinger along
the side of her nose would indicate the upshot. But I soon learned to
interpret these mute signs. She was a woman who disapproved of most
things, for excellent, if nebulous, reasons; and her silences were due
not to the fact that she had nothing to say, but too much.
Pollie and I talked long and earnestly that first evening at Beechwood.
She promised to write to me, to send me all the gossip of the village,
and to come and see me when she could. The next morning, after a
sorrowful breakfast, we parted. Standing on the table in the parlour
window, with eyes a little wilder than usual, I watched her pass out of
sight. A last wave of her handkerchief, and the plump-cheeked,
fair-skinned face was gone. The strangeness and solitude of my situation
flooded over me.
For a few days, strive as she might, Mrs Bowater's lodger moped. It was
not merely that she had become more helpless, but of far less
importance. This may, in part, be accounted for by the fact that, having
been accustomed at Lyndsey to live at the top of a high house and to
look down on the world, when I found myself foot to foot with it, so to
speak, on Beechwood Hill, it alarmingly intensified the _sense_ of my
small stature. Use and habit however. The relative merits of myself and
of the passing scene gradually readjusted themselves with a proper
respect for the former. Soon, too, as if from heaven, the packing-case
containing my furniture arrived. Mrs Bowater shared a whole morning over
its unpacking, ever and again standing in engrossed consideration of
some of my minute treasures, and, quite unaware of it, heaving a great
sigh. But how to arrange them there in a room already over-occupied?