THE MESSALINA OF THE SUBURBS. E. M. Delafield
me at the bottom of the road. There's a jolly good programme on at the Palatial."
"I hope you'll enjoy the pictures, Mr. Roberts," said Elsie demurely. She sidled backwards to the door.
"I shall wait for you—eight o'clock sharp."
"Don't catch cold waiting," she mocked.
"Look here, kid"
"That's mother! She'll skin me alive, if I give her half a chance!" She flew out into the hall and down the passage to the kitchen.
The servant Nellie was there, and Elsie's sister Geraldine.
"Where've you been, Elsie?"
"With mother. I didn't know you were here ; I thought you were s'posed to be ill."
"So I am ill," returned Geraldine bitterly. "But as you were out, someone had to do some work."
Elsie looked critically at her sister. Geraldine did look ill, sallow and with black rims round her eyes, but then she had something altogether wrong with her digestion, and often looked like that.
"Bilious again?"
"'M. I think it was that beastly pudding we had last night. I've been awfully sick."
"Poor wretch!"
Neither of them paid any attention to Nellie Simmons, who went on plunging and clattering greasy spoons and plates about in the water that steamed from a chipped enamel basin.
"Can't you take this rag, Elsie, and wipe a bit, and let me get upstairs? I'm sure I'm going to be sick again."
"I suppose I must, then—poor me!"
"Poor you, when you've been out since dinner! I should like to know what for. If it was me, now Oh, Lord, my head!"
"Well, go on upstairs again. Have you tried the new medicine that Ireen's aunt did the testimonial for?"
"Yes, and I don't believe it's a bit better than any of the others. I feel like nothing on earth. I say, where were you all the afternoon?"
"Curiosity killed the cat," said Elsie, wiping the plates.
"I'm sure I don't want to know."
"That's all right then, we're both satisfied, because I don't mean to tell you."
Geraldine looked angrily at her sister and walked away, her thin plait of dark hair flapping limply between her angular, slouching shoulders.
"What is there for supper to-night, Nellie?" said Elsie presently.
"The 'am."
"Oh, goodness, that old ham I Why can't we ever have anything nice, I should like to know! And I s'pose the cold tart's got to be finished up, and that beastly cold shape?"
"That's right," Nellie said laconically.
"Well, there'll be no cooking to do, that's one thing."
"She wants some soup put on, because of the new people, but I've left it all ready. I'm off at six sharp, I can tell you."
"What's the hurry, Nellie?" asked Elsie amicably. She saw that Nellie wanted to be asked, and she felt good-humoured because there was no cooking to be done, and she could lay the supper and ring the bell earlier than usual, so as to be able to keep her appointment with Mr. Roberts.
"I've got someone waiting for me, I 'ave," Nellie said importantly. "Couldn't be kept waiting—oh dear, no!"
Elsie looked at the ugly, white-faced Cockney woman, whose teeth projected, decayed and broken, and round the corners of whose mouth and nostrils clung clusters of dry pimples, and burst out laughing.
"It's true!" said Nellie, offended. "And I'm off now."
She went to dry her chapped hands on the limp and dingy roller-towel that hung beside the cold-water tap.
Elsie laughed again, partly to tease Nellie Simmons and partly because it really amused her to think that her own projected diversion with Mr. Roberts should be parodied by this grotesque Nellie and some unknown, equally grotesque, companion.
Nellie pulled down her hat and coat from the peg on the kitchen door, put them on and went away, although it was quarter of an hour before her time. She knew well enough that none of them would say anything, Elsie reflected. Girls were too difficult to get hold of, when one took in guests.
As soon as the side door had slammed behind Nellie, Elsie flew into the scullery. A broken piece of looking-glass hung there, where she had nailed it up herself long ago.
She pulled down the thick, dust-coloured wave of hair that fell from a boyish, left-hand parting, until it lay further across her forehead, deepening the natural kink in it with her fingers, and loosening the black ribbon bow that fell over one ear. The soft, flopping curls fell to her shoulders on either side of her full, childish face. She rubbed hard at her cheeks for a moment, without producing very much visible effect on their uniform pale pinkiness,starred all over with tiny golden freckles. The gold was repeated in her eyelashes and pale eyebrows, but Elsie's eyes, to her eternal regret, were neither blue nor brown. They were something between a dark grey and a light green, and the clear blue whites of them showed for a space between the iris and the lower lid.
Her nose was straight and short ; her wide mouth, habitually pouting, possessed a very full underlip and a short, curving upper one. When she showed her teeth, they were white and even, but rather far apart. The most salient characteristic of her face was that its high cheekbones, and well-rounded cheeks, gave an odd impression of pushing against her underlids, so that her eyes very often looked half shut, and small. Elsie saw this in herself, and it made her furious. She called it "a Japanese doll look."
She realised that her soft, rounded neck was really beautiful, and was secretly proud of the opulent curves of her figure ; but to other girls she pretended that she thought herself too fat, although in point of fact she wore no stays.
She thought with pride that she looked more like eighteen than sixteen years old, although she was not, and knew that she never would be, very tall.
Dragging a black velveteen tam-o'-shanter from her pocket, Elsie pulled it rakishly on over her curls, her fingers quickly and skilfully pouching the worn material so that it sagged over to one side. The hands with which she manipulated the tam-o'-shanter were freckled too, like her face, and of the same uniform soft pink. The fingers were short, planted very far apart, and broad at the base and inclining to curve backwards.
She wiped them on the roller-towel, as Nellie Simmons had done, only far more hurriedly, and then went quietly out at the side door. It opened straight into a small blind alley, and Elsie ran up it, and into the road at a corner of which her home was situated. Turning her back on No. 15, from which she had just emerged, she kept on the same side of the road, hoping to escape observation even if Mrs. Palmer were to look out of the window.
Very soon, however, she was obliged to cross the road, and then she rang the bell of a tall house that was the counterpart of the one she lived in, and indeed of all the other hundred and eighty yellow-and-red brick houses in Hillbourne Terrace.
Irene Tidmarsh opened the door, a lanky, big-eyed creature, with two prominent front teeth and an immense plait of ugly brown hair. Her arms and legs were thick and shapeless.
"Hallo, Elsie!"
"Hallo, Ireen. Look here, I can't stay. I only want to ask you if you'll swear we've been to the pictures together to-night, if anyone ever asks. Quick! Be a sport, and promise.''
"What's up?" Irene asked wearily.
"Oh, only my fun. I don't particularly want mother to know about me going out to-night, that's all. If I can say I was with you if I'm asked, it'll be all right, only you'll have to back me up if she doesn't believe me."
"Oh, all right, I don't care. You're a caution, Elsie Palmer—you and your made-up tales. Don't see much difference between them and downright lies, sometimes."
"Well, what am I to do? I can't ever go anywhere, or have any amusement, without