For a little while after Norman Roberts had gone away, Elsie was bored. She received a letter from him, reproaching her for not having been downstairs on the morning of his departure, and giving her an address in Liverpool. He begged her to write to him,'and the letter ended with half a dozen pen-and-ink crosses.
"That's for you, Elsie."
Elsie, who hated writing, collected with some difficulty a pen, ink, and a coloured picture postcard of the Houses of Parliament.
"Thanks for yours ever so much," she wrote. "I expect you're having a fine old time in Liverpool. All here send kind remembrances."
Then, because she could not think what else to put, she filled in the remaining space on the card with two large crosses. "From your's sincerely, Elsie."
Roberts, after an interval, wrote once more, and this letter Elsie did not answer at all. She was out nearly every evening, walking, or lounging round the nearest public park, with Irene Tidmarsh, Johnnie and Arthur Osborne, and Stanley Begg.
Arthur Osborne was nominally Irene's " friend," but he, as well as Johnnie and Stanley, always wanted to walk with Elsie, or to sit next her at the cinema, and their preference elated her, although the eldest of the three, Arthur, was only twenty, and not one of them was earning more than from fifteen to twenty shillings a week.
At last Irene and Elsie quarrelled about Arthur, and Irene, furious, went to Mrs. Palmer.
"It's no more than my duty, Mrs. Palmer," she virtuously declared, "to let you know the way Elsie goes on. The fellows may laugh and all that, but they don't like it, not really. I know my boy doesn't, for one."
Mrs. Palmer, on different grounds, was quite as angry as Irene.
She worked herself up, rehearsing to Geraldine all that Irene had said, and a great deal that she alleged herself to have replied, and she summoned her two unmarried sisters, Aunt Ada and Aunt Gertie Cookson, to No. 15.
"What I want," she explained, "is to give the gurl a fight. I'm not going to have her making herself cheap with young rag-tag-and-bobtail like those Osborne boys. Why, a pretty gurl like Elsie could get married, as easily as not, to a fellow with money. Nice enough people come to this house, I'm sure. It's on account of the gurls, simply, that I've always been so particular about references and all. I'm sure many's the time I could have had the house full but for not liking the looks of one or two that were ready to pay anything for a front bedroom. But I've always said to myself, ' No,' I've said, ' a mother's first duty is to her children,' I've said, especially being in the position of father and mother both, as you might say."
"I'm sure you've always been a wonderful mother, Edie," said Aunt Ada.
"Well," Mrs. Palmer conceded, mollified.
When Geraldine came in with the tea-tray to the drawing-room that Mrs. Palmer was for once able to use, because the Williamses, her only guests, had a sitting-room of their own, the aunts received her with marked favour.
"Mother's helpful girlie!" said Aunt Gertie, as Geraldine put down the plate of bread-and-butter, the Madeira cake on a glass cakestand, and another plate of rock-buns.
"Where's Elsie?" Mrs. Palmer asked significantly.
"Cutting out in the kitchen."
"Tell her to come along up. She knows your aunties are here."
"I told her to come, and she made use of a very vulgar expression," Geraldine spitefully declared.
"I don't know what's come over Elsie, I'm sure," Mrs.
Palmer declared helplessly. "She's learnt all these low tricks and manners from that friend of hers, that Ireen Tidmarsh."
Mrs. Palmer was very angry with Irene for her revelations, although she was secretly rather enjoying her younger daughter's notoriety.
"Get that naughty gurl up from the kitchen directly," she commanded Geraldine. "No—wait a minute, I'll go myself."
With extraordinary agility she heaved her considerable bulk out of her low chair and left the room.
"And what have you been doing with yourself lately?" Aunt Gertie enquired of Geraldine.
She was stout and elderly-looking, with a mouth overcrowded by large teeth. She was older than Mrs. Palmer, and Aunt Ada was S' me years younger than either, and wore, with a sort of permanent smirk, the remains of an ash-blond prettiness. They were just able, in 1913, to live in the house at Wimbledon that their father had left them, on their joint income.
"There's always heaps to do in the house, I'm sure, Aunt Gertie," said Geraldine vaguely. "And I'm not strong enough to go to work anywhere, really I'm not. Now Elsie's different. She could do quite well in the shorthand-typing, but she's bone idle—that's what she is. Or there's dressmaking—Elsie's clever with her needle, that I will say for her."
Mrs. Palmer came back with Elsie behind her. The girl reluctantly laid her face for a moment against each of the withered ones that bumped towards her in conventional greeting.
"Hallo, Aunt Gertie. Hallo, Aunt Ada," she said lifelessly.
Mrs. Palmer began to pour out the tea, and whilst they ate and drank elegantly,the conversation was allowed to take its course without any reference to the real point at issue.
"What are these Williamses like, that have got the downstairs sitting-room, Edie?"
"Oh, they are nice people," said Mrs. Palmer enthusiastically. "A solicitor, he is, and only just waiting to find a
house. I believe they've ever such a lot of furniture in store. They lived at Putney before, but it didn't suit Mrs. Williams. She's delicate."
Mrs. Palmer raised her eyebrows and glanced meaningly at the aunts.
Aunt Ada gazed eagerly back at her.
"Go and get some more bread-and-butter, Elsie," commanded Mrs. Palmer, and when the girl had left the room she nodded at Aunt Ada.
"You know, Mrs. Williams isn't very strong just now. She's been unlucky before, too—twice, I fancy."
"But when? Surely you aren't going to have anything like that here?"
"Oh dear, no! I told her it was out of the question, and she quite understood. It isn't till April, and they hope to move into their new house after Christmas. She must be about fifteen years younger than he is, I imagine."
"How strange!" said Aunt Gertie.
Both she and Aunt Ada were always intensely interested in any detail about anybody, whether known or unknown to them personally.
"Rather remarkable, isn't it, that there should be an event on the way " Aunt Ada began.
Mrs. Palmer frowned heavily at her as Elsie came back into the room. "It's ever so long since we've seen you, as I was just saying," she remarked in a loud and artificial voice, making Elsie wish that she had waited outside the door and listened. She thought that they must have
