Sparrows | Page 7

her off, if you want to do anything else," remarked her sister.
"Won't you send her her fare?" asked Harold.
"Is that necessary?" queried Mrs Devitt.
"Isn't it usual?"
"I can give it to her when she comes," said Mrs Devitt, who hated parting with money, although, when it was a question of entertaining the elect of Melkbridge, she spent her substance lavishly.
Thus it came about that a letter was written to Miss Annie Mee, Brandenburg College, Aynhoe Road, West Kensington Park, London, W., saying that Mrs Devitt would expect Miss Keeves, for an interview, by the train that left Paddington for Melkbridge at ten on Friday next; also, that she would defray her third-class travelling expenses.

CHAPTER TWO
MAVIS KEEVES
The following Friday morning, Mavis Keeves sprang from bed on waking. It was late when she had gone to sleep the previous night, for she had been kept up by the festivities pertaining to breaking- up day at Brandenburg College, and the inevitable "talk over" the incidents of the event with Miss Helen and Miss Annie Mee, which conversation had been prolonged till nearly twelve o'clock; but the excitement of travelling to the place of her birth, and the certainty of getting an engagement in some capacity or another (Mavis had no doubt on this point) were more than enough to curtail her slumbers. She had fallen asleep laughing to herself at the many things which had appealed to her sense of humour during the day, and it was the recollection of some of these which made her smile directly she was awake. She tubbed and dressed quickly, although she had some bother with her hair, which, this morning, seemed intent on defying the efforts of her fingers. Having dressed herself to her somewhat exigent satisfaction, she went downstairs, passing the doors of those venerable virgins, the Misses Helen and Annie Mee, as she descended to the ground-floor, on which was the schoolroom. This was really two rooms, but the folding doors, which had once divided the apartment, had long since been removed from their hinges; they were now rotting in the strip of garden behind the house.
The appearance of Brandenburg College belied its pretentious name. Once upon a time, its name-plate had decorated the gates of a stately old mansion in the Fulham of many years ago; here it was that Mrs Devitt, then Miss Hilda Spraggs, had been educated. Since those fat days, the name-plate of Brandenburg College had suffered many migrations, always in a materially downward direction, till now it was screwed on the railings of a stuffy little road in Shepherd's Bush, which, as Mavis was in the habit of declaring, was called West Kensington Park for "short."
The brass plate, much the worse for wear, told the neighbourhood that Brandenburg College educated the daughters of gentlemen; perhaps it was as well that this definition, like the plate, was fallen on hard times, inasmuch as it was capable of such an elastic interpretation that it enabled the Misses Mee to accept pupils whom, in their prosperous days, they would have refused. Mavis looked round the familiar, shabby schoolroom, with its atmosphere of ink and slate pencil, to which she was so soon to say "good-bye."
It looked desolate this morning, perhaps because there leapt to her fancy the animated picture it had presented the day before, when it had been filled by a crowd of pupils (dressed in their best), their admiring parents and friends.
Yesterday's programme had followed that of all other girls' school breaking-up celebrations, with the difference that the passages selected for recital had been wholly culled from the writings of Mr Ruskin. Reference to the same personage had occurred in the speech to the prize-winners (every girl in the school had won a prize of sorts) made by Mr Smiley, the curate, who performed this office; also, the Misses Mee, when opportunity served, had not been backward in making copious references to the occasion on which they had drunk tea with the deceased author. Indeed, the parents and friends had breathed such an atmosphere of Ruskin that there were eight requests for his works at the local free library during the following week.
"Good old Ruskin!" laughed Mavis, as she ran downstairs to the breakfast room, which was situated in the basement. Here, the only preparation made for the meal was a not too clean table-cloth spread upon the table. Mavis went into the kitchen, where she found Amelia, the general servant, doing battle with a smoky kitchen-fire.
"How long before breakfast is ready?" asked Mavis.
"Is that you, miss? Oi can't see you properly," said Amelia, as she turned her head. "This 'ere smoke had got into my best oye."
Amelia spoke truly; there was a great difference between the seeing capacity of her two eyes, one of these being what is known as