I
She needn’t have worried; neither Enid nor Dodo Mell asked a single
question. Somewhere near ten o’clock Enid woke up and at once shook her
sleepy friend, who, after putting on her spectacles and a lavender
kimono, set to work to make coffee. And suddenly discovered Rosaleen
asleep in a chair in the studio.
“Coffee, Rosaleen!” she called, cheerfully.
She awoke with a start and sat up, pale and dishevelled, in her party
dress and slippers. But they showed no surprise. Breakfast was ready on
a trunk in the back room and they all sat down to it, the benign Dodo in
her kimono, Enid in a smock and petticoat, with her bare feet in mules,
and Rosaleen with her incongruously dissipated look.
“_Nice_ rolls!” said Enid. “Where’d you get them, Rosaleen?”
“A little new baker’s,” Rosaleen answered.
Never had her friends seemed so charming, or a feminine world so
desirable. The coffee cheered her sad heart, and raised her spirits, and
after she had bathed and dressed, she lost all sense of fatigue. She
had, in fact, that false vigour one sometimes has after a sleepless
night, that sensation of being all mind and spirit and no body.
“Ambrose is coming this afternoon!” called Miss Mell, suddenly, from her
drawing, to Rosaleen washing handkerchiefs in the rusty sink.
“Who’s Ambrose?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, how cruel! Why, he’s the one who adored you so last night.
He’s my cousin.”
Rosaleen recollected the young man like a sprightly devil, with the
curly hair and the outstanding ears.
“I’d better tidy up the place then,” she said. “It’s awful.”
“I’ll treat us all to cakes for tea,” said Dodo. “If you’ll get them,
Rosaleen?”
“And there are two dead mice in the trap,” said Enid. “Better take them
out!”
Rosaleen protested; this was an intolerable task. But Dodo and Enid
assured her that the mice would stay there until she removed them.
“And every day it’ll be worse,” said Enid.
So Rosaleen was obliged to drop the little victims into an empty cracker
box and throw them out of the window at the back of the hall. She
fetched the cakes and borrowed an extra cup from Miss Gosorkus. Then
she sat down listlessly. Her work was all in Lawrence’s studio, and she
had nothing to do.