admit there was nothing disrespectful in his manner. He set her bag down in one of the rooms opening out of the circular landing and asked for her trunk checks, and suggested sending Amy up to make her comfortable. She gave him the trunk checks, refused the offer of Amy’s help, and when he had closed the door sat down to examine her surroundings and wait for the appearance of her aunt.

There had been a certain charm about the entrance hall and stairway of the house, but the room in which she found herself was as uninteresting as possible. It was large and high-ceiled and almost empty and streamers of loosened and discoloured wall paper hung from the walls. It was in the rear of the house. The few essential pieces of furniture in the room made it look even larger than it really was. It looked like what it was, a very much unused bedroom in a house very much too large for its inhabitants. She walked to the window and looked out, but the view did not interest her. It was only of the rear of the houses on Twenty-second Street. The house opposite had a tiny back garden that ran out to meet a similar back garden in the rear of her aunt’s house. Ruth did not call this plot of ground a garden, because it had nothing growing in it except 15one stunted, twisted tree on the branches of which September had left a dozen pale green leaves. It made her think of an anæmic slum child. Looking at it Ruth felt suddenly very sad and neglected. She had hoped that her aunt would not be too much like a relative, but now she began to persuade herself that she had looked forward to the embracing arms of a motherly aunt, and her cold reception had quite broken her heart. Instead of a fussy, motherly relative she had found a cold, selfish woman living in a house much too large, surrounded by servants—Ruth had only seen two but there were probably more. She was unwelcome; she had been shoved off into the shabbiest room in the house by an insolent servant. But she was not a pauper. She would tell her aunt very coldly that she had only come to pay her respects and was going immediately to an hotel.

15

“Oh no, Aunt Gloria; I couldn’t think of imposing on you,” she could hear herself saying, and of course then her aunt would urge her to stay, but she wouldn’t. What could her aunt do in such a big house? It was four floors and a basement. It must be full of shabby, unused rooms like this one. Just then there was a knock at the door, and she hadn’t even smoothed her hair or powdered her nose as she had intended doing before her aunt sent for her.

“Come in,” she said. Her voice sounded husky and 

 Prev. P 9/169 next