Sally Bishop. E. Temple Thurston
might call—friendly inquiry about it—see?"
She brushed the heads of the shrimps into the slop-basin with her hand and stood up, evidently offended, from the table.
"Of course, it's no business of mine, and I have no cause to complain of anything you do; you give no offence to me, I must say that. I never had better be'aved lodgers than I've got at present."
"But you felt curious?" suggested Janet.
"Me? Curious? Well, I think that's the last thing you could accuse me of. I've got enough affairs of me own without worrying about other people's. Me? Curious?" She laughed at the impossibility of such a thing, and began to clear away the breakfast things with more noise than was actually necessary.
"Well, there's nothing to be excited about, then," said Janet.
Mrs. Hewson laid a cup and saucer with such gentleness upon a pile of plates that the absence of noise was oppressive.
"I'm not excited," she said with crimson cheeks.
"Sorry," said Janet, laconically; "thought you were. If there's a thing more hateful than another, I think it's the vexation of a person who can't satisfy their curiosity about some other body's business. Don't you think so, Mrs. Hewson?"
"I'm sure I don't know. Those abstruse matters don't worry me."
"No? Well, that is so, and it's about the commonest weakness of humanity. If I thought you worried about our affairs—of course, I know you don't, you're most reasonable—I wouldn't stay here another minute."
The colour in Mrs. Hewson's cheeks went from red to white.
"But you said I was curious," she said in a reserved voice.
"Oh yes, that was only fun! Hadn't you better get a key, Sally, if you're going to be late. Can you spare Miss Bishop a key, Mrs. Hewson?"
"Certainly; of course; I'll go and get it."
They both laughed when she had gone out. Sally told Janet that she was wonderful.
"She'll never meddle again," she said. "I couldn't have done it like you did."
"Of course you couldn't."
"But why not? I wouldn't be afraid to, but simply I shouldn't think of things; and why shouldn't I?"
"Because you're not meant to fight, you have to be fought for, like Mr. Arthur fought for you in his own particular way, like this man you're going to meet to-night is fighting for you too."
Sally's eyes looked wonderingly before her. "Do you think things are really like that?" she asked.
"I'm sure of it."
"But why?—why, for instance, are you meant to fight?"
"Do you want me to answer the riddle of the Universe?"
"I don't see why it should be such a riddle."
"Well, it is. I don't know who arranged these things, no more than any one else, though a good many make a comfortable income by telling you that they do. But it's pretty obvious that it is so; that's enough for me."
"I don't see why it's obvious," Sally persisted.
Janet stood away from the table and held out her arms—the thin, fleshless arms—straight, no deviation to the ungainly shoulders. There was unconscious drama in it. Yet she was the last person in the world to act.
"Well, look at me," she said.
Sally only looked at her eyes, and her lips twitched compassionately.
"You may be all wrong," she said. "I may have to fight as well—you don't know—and somebody, you can never tell, may fight for you."
Janet took the round, warm cheeks in her hands and caressed them with the long, sensitive fingers.
"That'll never be," she said quietly—"never—never. I know it right away in here." She laid her hand upon her chest.
"But why?" Sally repeated petulantly, as though wishing it could alter the truth.
"Because I suppose I really want to do the fighting, however much I may think differently, when I see you and hear you talk, when your heart's going and there's all the meaning of it in your eyes. I've got to fight, and away inside me I want to. I suppose that's the compensation."
Then Mrs. Hewson brought the key, saying words over it—an incantation of half-hearted rebuke—and following Sally with her eyes as she walked out of the kitchen.
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