Gone to Earth | Page 5

mother can eat as well as schoolgirls?'
Albert was gazing at Hazel so animatedly, so obviously approving of all she said, that her aunt was very much ruffled.
'No wonder you only want to be like yourself,' he said. 'Jam! my word, Hazel, you're jam!'
'Albert!' cried his mother raspingly, with a pathetic note of pleading, 'haven't I always taught you to say preserve?' She was not pleading against the inelegant word, but against Hazel.
When Albert went back to the shop, Hazel helped her aunt to wash up. All the time she was doing this, with unusual care, and cleaning the knives--a thing she hated--she was waiting anxiously for the expected invitation to stay the night. She longed for it as the righteous long for the damnation of their enemies. She never paid a visit except here, and to her it was a wild excitement. The gas-stove, the pretty china, the rose-patterned wall-paper, were all strange and marvellous as a fairy-tale. At home there was no paper, no lath and plaster, only the bare bricks, and the ceiling was of bulging sailcloth hung under the rafters.
Now to all these was added the new delight of Albert's admiring gaze--an alert, live gaze, a thing hitherto unknown to Albert. Perhaps, if she stayed, Albert would take her out for the evening. She would see the streets of the town in the magic of lights. She would walk out in her new dress with a real young man--a young man who possessed a gilt watch-chain. The suspense, as the wintry afternoon drew in, became almost intolerable. Still her aunt did not speak. The sitting-room looked so cosy when tea was laid; the firelight played over the cups; her aunt drew the curtains. On one side there was joy, warmth--all that she could desire; on the other, a forlorn walk in the dark. She had left it until so late that her heart shook at the idea of the many miles she must cover alone if her aunt did not ask her.
Her aunt knew what was going on in Hazel's mind, and smiled grimly at Hazel's unusual meekness. She took the opportunity of administering a few hometruths.
'You look like an actress,' she said.
'Do I, auntie?'
'Yes. It's a disgrace, the way you look. You quite draw men's eyes.'
'It's nice to draw men's eyes, inna it, auntie?'
'Nice! Hazel, I should like to box your ears! You naughty girl! You'll go wrong one of these days.'
'What for will I, auntie?'
'Some day you'll get spoke to!' She said the last words in a hollow whisper. 'And after that, as you won't say and do what a good girl would, you'll get picked up.'
'I'd like to see anyone pick me up!' said Hazel indignantly. 'I'd kick!'
'Oh! how unladylike! I didn't mean really picked up! I meant allegorically--like in the Bible.'
'Oh! only like in the Bible,' said Hazel disappointedly. 'I thought you meant summat real.'
'Oh! You'll bring down my grey hairs,' wailed Mrs. Prowde.
An actress was bad, but an infidel! 'That I should live to hear it--in my own villa, with my own soda cake on the cake-dish--and my own son,' she added dramatically, as Albert entered, 'coming in to have his God-fearing heart broken!'
This embarrassed Albert, for it was true, though the cause assigned was not.
'What's Hazel been up to?' he queried.
The affection beneath his heavy pleasantry strengthened his mother in her resolve that Hazel should not stay the night.
'There's a magic-lantern lecture on tonight, Hazel,' he said. 'Like to come?'
'Ah! I should that.'
'You can't walk home at that time of night,' said Mrs. Prowde. 'In fact, you ought to start now.'
'But Hazel's staying the night, mother, surely?'
'Hazel must get back to her father.'
'But, mother, there's the spare-room.'
'The spare-room's being spring-cleaned.'
Albert plunged; he was desperate and forgetful of propriety.
'I can sleep on this sofa,' he said. 'She can have my room.'
'Hazel can't have your room. It's not suitable.'
'Well, let her share yours, then.'
Mrs. Prowde played her trump-card. 'Little I thought,' she said, 'when your dear father went, that before three years had passed you'd be so forgetful of my comfort (and his memory) as to suggest such a thing. As long as I live, my room's mine. When I'm gone,' she concluded, knocking down her adversary with her superior weight of years--'when I'm gone (and the sooner the better for you, no doubt), you can put her in my room and yourself, too.'
When she had said this she was horrified at herself. What an improper thing to say! Even anger and jealousy did not excuse impropriety, though they excused any amount of unkindness.
But at this Hazel cried out in her turn:
'That he never will!' The fierce egoism of the consciously weak flamed up in her. 'I keep myself to myself,' she finished.
'If such things come to pass, mother,' Albert said, and his