第47章

The black trimmings and drooping feathers set off the ivory pallor of her face and made the wonderful hair gleam like threads of precious metal.

She turned her head to judge it at very angle,surprised at her own beauty.

Presently she lifted it off her head as tenderly as if it were a crown,with the reverence of women for the things that increase their beauty.

She put it down as if it were made of glass.

"I'll git Miss Jones to alter the bow,an'put the feathers farther back,"she said,like one in a dream.

"I thought yer wouldn't wear it at any price,"said Chook,delighted,but puzzled.

"Sometimes you talk like a man that's bin drinkin',"said Pinkey,with the faintest possible smile.

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

It was past ten o'clock,and one by one,with a sudden,swift collapse,each shop in Botany Road extinguished its lights,leaving a blank gap in the shining row of glass windows.Mrs Yabsley turned into Cardigan Street and,taking a firmer grip of her parcels,mounted the hill slowly on account of her breath.She still continued to shop at the last minute,in a panic,as her mother had done before her,proud of her habit of being the last customer at the butcher's and the grocer's.She looked up at the sky and,being anxious for the morrow,tried to forecast the weather.

A sharp wind was blowing,and the stars winked cheerfully in a windswept sky.There was every promise of a fine day,but to make sure,she tried the corn on her left foot.The corn gave no sign,and she thought with satisfaction of her new companion,Miss Perkins.

For years she had searched high and low for some penniless woman to share her cottage and Jonah's allowance,and her pensioners had gone out of their way to invent new methods of robbing her.But Miss Perkins (whom she had found shivering and hungry on the doorstep as she was going to bed one night and had taken in without asking questions,as was her habit)guarded Mrs Yabsley's property like a watchdog.For Cardigan Street,when it learned that Mrs Yabsley only worked for the fun of the thing,had leaped to the conclusion that she was rolling in money.They knew that she had given Jonah his start in life,and felt certain that she owned half of the Silver Shoe.

So the older residents had come to look on Mrs Yabsley as their property,and they formed a sort of club to sponge on her methodically.They ran out of tea,sugar and flour,and kept the landlord waiting while they ran up to borrow a shilling.They each had their own day,and kept to it,respecting the rights of their friends to a share of the plunder.None went away empty-handed,and they looked with unfriendly eyes on any new arrivals who might interfere with their rights.They thought they deceived the old woman,and the tea and groceries had a finer flavour in consequence;but they would have been surprised to know that Mrs Yabsley had herself fixed her allowance from Jonah at two pounds a week and her rent.

"That's enough money fer me to play the fool with,an'if it don't do much good,it can't do much 'arm,"she had remarked,with a mysterious smile,when he had offered her anything she needed to live in comfort.

The terrible Miss Perkins had altered all that.She had discovered that Mrs Harris was paying for a new hat with the shilling a week she got for Johnny's medicine;that Mrs Thorpe smelt of drink half an hour after she had got two shillings towards the rent;that Mr Hawkins had given his wife a black eye for saying that he was strong enough to go to work again.

Mrs Yabsley had listened with a perplexing smile to her companion's cries of indignation.

"I could 'ave told yer all that meself,"she said,"but wot's it matter?

Who am I to sit in judgment on 'em?They know I've got more money than Iwant,but they're too proud to ask fer it openly.People with better shirts on their backs are built the same way,if all I 'ear is true.I've bin poor meself an'yer may think there's somethin'wrong in me 'ead,but if I've got a shillin',an'some poor devil's got nuthin',I reckon I owe 'im sixpence.It isn't likely fer you to understand such things,bein'brought up in the lap of luxury,but don't yer run away with the idea that poor people are the only ones who are ashamed to beg an'willin'to steal."Mrs Yabsley had asked no questions when she had found Miss Perkins on the step,but little by little her companion had dropped hints of former glory,and then launched into a surprising tale.She was the daughter of a rich man,who had died suddenly,and left her at the mercy of a stepmother and she had grown desperate and fled,choosing to earn her own bread till her cousin arrived,who was on his way from England to marry her.On several occasions she had forgotten that her name was Perkins,and when Mrs Yabsley dryly commented on this,she confessed that she had borrowed the name from her maid when she fled.And she whispered her real name in the ear of Mrs Yabsley,who marvelled,and promised to keep the secret.

Mrs Yabsley,who was no fool,looked for some proof of the story,and was satisfied.The girl was young and pretty,and gave herself the airs of a duchess.Mrs Swadling,indeed,had spent so much of her time at the cottage trying to worm her secret from the genteel stranger that she unconsciously imitated her aristocratic manner and way of talking,until Mr Swadling had brought her to her senses by getting drunk and giving her a pair of black eyes,which destroyed all resemblance to the fascinating stranger.Mrs Swadling had learned nothing,but she assured half the street that Miss Perkins's father had turned her out of doors for refusing to marry a man old enough to be her father,and the other half that a forged will had robbed her of thousands and a carriage and pair.

Cardigan Street had watched the aristocracy from the gallery of the theatre with sharp,envious eyes,and reported their doings to Mrs Yabsley,but Miss Perkins was the first specimen she had ever seen in the flesh.