CHAPTER XII
Victoria had forgotten her latchkey. Miss Briggs opened the door for her. Her sallow face brightened up.
'There's a gentleman waiting, mum,' she said, 'and 'ere's a telegram.' Came jest five minutes after you left. I've put him in the front room what's empty, mum. Thought you'd rather see him there. Been 'ere 'arf an 'our, mum.'
Victoria did not attempt to disentangle the hours of arrival of the gentleman and the telegram; she tore open the brown envelope excitedly. It only heralded the coming of Edward who was doubtless the gentleman.
'Thanks, Miss Briggs,' she said, 'it's my brother.'
'Yes, mum, nice young gentleman. He's all right; been reading the New Age, mum, this 'arf hour, what belongs to the lady on the third.'
Victoria smiled and went into the dining-room, where none dine in lodging houses save ghosts. Edward was standing near the mantlepiece immersed in the paper.
'Why, Ted, this is nice of you,' cried Victoria going up to him and taking his hand.
'I had to come up to town suddenly,' said Edward, 'to get books for the Head. I'm going back this afternoon but I thought I'd look you up. Did you get the telegram.'
'Just got it now,' said Victoria, showing it, 'so you might have saved the sixpence.'
'I'm sorry,' said Edward. 'I didn't know until this morning.'
'It doesn't matter. I'm so glad to see you.'
There was an awkward pause. Edward brushed away the hair from his forehead. His hands flew back to his watch-chain. Victoria had briefly written to him to tell him why she left the Holts. Fearful of all that touches women, he was acutely conscious that he blamed her and yet knew her to be blameless.
'It's a beautiful day,' he said suddenly.
'Isn't it?' agreed Victoria, looking at him with surprise. There was another pause.
'What are you doing just now, Vic?' Edward breathed more freely, having taken the plunge.
'I've just got some work,' said Victoria. 'I begin on Wednesday.'
'Oh, indeed?' said Edward with increasing interest. 'Have you got a post as companion?'
'Well, not exactly,' said Victoria. She realised that her story was not very easy to tell a man like Edward. He looked at her sharply. His face flushed. His brow puckered. With both hands he grasped his watch-chain.
'I hope, Victoria,' he said severely, 'that you are not adopting an occupation unworthy of a lady. I mean I know you couldn't,' he added, his severity melting into nervousness.
'I suppose nothing's unworthy,' said Victoria; 'the fact is, Ted, I'm afraid you won't like it much, but I'm going on the stage.'
Edward started and flushed like an angry boy. 'On the.. the stage?' he gasped.
'Yes,' said Victoria quietly. 'I've got an engagement for six months to play at Vichy and other places in France. I only get six pounds a month but they pay all the expenses. I'll have quite thirty pounds clear when I come back. What do you think of that?'
'It's.. it's awful,' cried Edward, losing all self-consciousness. 'How can you do such a thing, Vic? If it were in London, it would be different. You simply can't do it.'
'Can't?' asked Victoria, raising her eyebrows. 'Why?'
'It's not done. No really Vic, you can't do it.' Edward was evidently disturbed. Fancy a sister of his.. It was preposterous.
'I'm sorry, Ted,' said Victoria, 'but I'm going on Wednesday. I've signed the agreement.'
Edward looked at her almost horror-struck. His spectacles had slid down to the sharp tip of his nose.
'You are doing very wrong, Victoria,' he said, resuming his pedagogic gravity. 'You could have done nothing that I should have disapproved of as much. You should have looked out for something else.'
'Looked out for something else?' said Victoria with the suspicion of a sneer. 'Look here, Ted. I know you mean well, but I know what I'm doing; I haven't been in London for six months without finding out that life is hard on women like me. I'm no good because I'm too good for a poor job and not suitable for a superior one. So I've just got to do what I can.'
'Why didn't you try for a post as companion?' asked Edward with a half snarl.
'Try indeed! Anybody can see you haven't had to try, Ted. I've tried everything I could think of, agencies, societies, papers, everything. I can't get a post. I must do something. I've got to take what I can get. I know it now; we women are just raw material. The world uses as much of us as it needs and throws the rest on the scrap heap. Do you think I don't keep my eyes open? Do you think I don't see that when you want somebody to do double work at half rates you get a woman? And she thanks God and struggles for the work that's too dirty or too hard for a man to touch.'
Victoria paced up and down the small room, carried away by her vehemence. Edward said nothing. He was much upset and did not know what to say; he had never seen Victoria like this and he was constitutionally afraid of vigour.
'I'm sorry, Ted,' said Victoria stopping suddenly. She laid her hand on his sleeve. 'There, don't sulk with me. Let's go out to lunch and I'll go and choose your books with you after. Is it a bargain?'
'I don't want to discuss the matter again,' replied Edward with as much composure as he could muster. 'Yes, let's go out to lunch.'
The rest of the day passed without another word on the subject of Victoria's downfall. She saw Edward off at St Pancras. After he had said good-bye to her, he suddenly leaned out of the window of the railway carriage as if to speak, then changed his mind and sank back on the seat. Victoria smiled at her victory.
Next morning she broke the news to Miss Briggs. The landlady seemed amazed as well as concerned.
'You seem rather taken aback,' said Victoria.
'Well, mum, you see it's a funny thing the stage; young ladies all seems to think it's easy to get on. And then they don't get on. And there you are.'
'Well I am on,' said Victoria, 'so I shall have to leave on Wednesday.'
'Sorry to lose you, mum,' said Miss Briggs, ''ope yer'll 'ave a success. In course, as you 'aven't given me notice, mum, it'll 'ave to be a week's money more.'
'Oh, come Miss Briggs, this is too bad,' cried Victoria, 'why, you've got a whole floor vacant! What would it have mattered if I had given you notice?'
'Might have let it, mum. Besides it's the law,' said Miss Briggs, placing her arms akimbo, ready for the fray.
'Very well then,' said Victoria coldly, 'don't let's say anything more about it.'
Miss Briggs looked at her critically. 'No offence meant, mum,' she said timidly, 'it's a 'ard life, lodgers.'
'Indeed?' said Victoria without any show of interest.
'You wouldn't believe it, mum, all I've got to put up with. There's Hetty now.'
'Yes, yes, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria impatiently, 'you've told me about Hetty.'
'To be sure, mum,' replied Miss Briggs, humbly. 'It ain't easy to make ends meet. What with the rent and them Borough Council rates. There ain't no end to it, mum. I lives in the basement, mum, and that means gas all the afternoon, mum.'
Victoria looked at her again. This was a curious outlook. The poor troglodyte had translated the glory of the sun into cubic feet of gas.
'Yes, I suppose it is hard,' she said reflectively.
'To be sure, mum,' mused Miss Briggs. 'Sometimes you can't let at all. I've watched through the area railings, mum, many a long day in August, wondering if the legs I can see was coming 'ere. They don't mostly, mum.'
'Then why do you go on?' asked Victoria hardening suddenly.
'What am I to do, mum? I just gets my board and lodging out of it, mum. Keeps one respectable; always been respectable, mum. That ain't so easy in London, mum. Ah, when I was a young girl, might have been different, mum; you should have seen me 'air. Curls like anything, mum, when I puts it in papers. 'Ad a bit of a figure too, mum.'
'Deary me!'
Victoria looked with sympathy at the hard thin face, the ragged hair. Yes, she was respectable enough, poor Miss Briggs! Women have a hard life. No wonder they too are hard. You cannot afford to be earthenware among the brass pots.
'What will you do when you can't run the house any more?' she asked more gently.
'Do, mum? I dunno.'
Yet another philosophy.
'Miss Briggs,' came a man's voice from the stairs.
'Coming, sir,' yelled Miss Briggs in the penetrating tone that calling from cellar to attic teaches.
'Where are my boots?' said the voice on the stairs.
'I'll get 'em for you, sir,' cried Miss Briggs shuffling to the door on her worn slippers.
Life is a hard thing, thought Victoria again. Another woman for the scrap heap. Fourteen hours work a day, nightmares of unlet rooms, boots to black and coals to carry, dirt, loneliness, harsh words and at the end 'I dunno.' Is that to be my fate? she wondered.
However her blood soon raced again; she was an actress, she was going abroad, she was going to see the world, to enslave it, to have adventures, live. It was good. All that day Victoria trod on air. She no longer felt her loneliness. The sun was out and aglow, bringing in its premature exuberance joyful moisture to her temples. She, with the world, was young. In a fit of extravagance she lunched at a half crown table d'hôte in Oxford Street, where pink shades softly diffuse the light on shining glass and silver. The coffee was almost regal, so strong, so full of sap. The light of triumph was in her eyes, making men turn back, sometimes follow and look into her face, half appealing, half insolent. But Victoria was unconscious of them, for the world was at her feet. She was the axis of the earth. It was in such a frame of mind that, the next day, she climbed the steps of Soho Place, careless of the view into the underground kitchen, of the two dogs who under the archway fought, growling, fouling the air with the scents of their hides, over a piece of offal. She ran up the stairs lightly. The door was still ajar.
Two men were sitting in the anteroom, both smoking briar pipes. The taller of the two got up.
'Yes?' he said interrogatively.
'I.. you.. is Mr Carrel here?' asked Victoria nervously.
'No Miss,' said the man calmly, 'he's just gone to Marlborough Street.'
'Oh,' said Victoria, still nervous, 'will he be long?'
'I should say so, miss,' replied the man, 'perhaps twelve months, perhaps more.'
Victoria gasped. 'I don't understand,' she said, but her heart began to beat.
'Don't s'pose you would, miss,' said the short man, getting up. 'Fact is, miss, we're the police and we've had to take him; just about time we did, too. Leaving for France to-night with a batch of girls. S'pose you're one of them?'
'I was going to-night,' said Victoria faintly.
'May I have your name?' asked the tall man politely, taking out a pocket book.
'Fulton,' she faltered. 'Victoria Fulton.'
'M'yes, that's it. 'Gladys Oxford,'' said the tall man turning back a page. 'Well Miss, you can thank your stars you're out of it.'
'But what has he done?' asked Victoria with an effort.
'Lord, Miss, you're from the country, I can see,' said the short man amiably. 'I thought everybody knew that little game. Take you over to Vichy, you know. Make you dance and sing. Provide costumes.' He winked at his companion.
'Costumes,' said Victoria, 'what do you mean?'
'Costumes don't mean much, Miss, over there,' said the tall man. 'Fact is you'd have to wear what they like and sing what they like when you pass the plate round among the customers.'
Something seemed to freeze in Victoria.
'He said it was a theatre of varieties,' she gasped.
'Quite true,' said the tall man with returning cynicism. 'A theatre right enough, but you'd have supplied the variety to the customers.'
Victoria clenched her hands on the handle of her parasol. Then she turned to fly.
The short man stopped her and demanded her address, informing her that she was to attend at Marlborough Street next day at eleven thirty.
'Case mayn't be called before twelve,' he added. 'Sorry to trouble you, Miss. You won't hear any more about it unless it's a case for the Sessions.'
Victoria ran down the steps, through the alley and into Charing Cross Road as if something was tracking her, tracking her down. So this was the end of the dream. She had stretched her hand out to the roses, and the gods, less merciful to her than to Tantalus, had filled her palm with thorns. It was horrible, horrible. She had imagination, and a memory of old prints after Rowlandson which her father had treasured came back to her with almost nauseating force. She pictured the French café chantant like the Cave of Harmony; rough boards on trestles, laden with tankards of foaming beer, muddy lights, a foulness of tobacco smoke, a raised stage with an enormous woman singing on it, her eye frightfully dilated by belladonna, her massive arms and legs gleaming behind the dirty footlights and everywhere around men smoking, with noses like snouts, bodies like swines, hairy hands – hands, ye gods!
She walked quickly away from the place of revelation. She hurried through the five o'clock inferno of Trafalgar Square, careless of the traffic, escaping death ten times. She hurried down the spaces of Whitehall, and only slackened her pace at Westminster Bridge. There she stopped for a moment; the sun was setting and gilded and empurpled the foreshores. The horror of the past half hour seemed to fade away as she watched the roses and mauves bloom and blend, the deep shadows of the embankments rise and fall. Near by, a vagrant, every inch of him clothed in rags, the dirt of his face mimicking their colour, smoked a short clay pipe, puffing at long intervals small wreaths of smoke into the blue air. And as Victoria watched them form, rise and vanish into nothingness, the sun kiss gently but pitilessly the old vagrant hunched up against the parapet, the horror seemed to melt away. The peace of the evening was expelling it, but another dread visitor was heralded in. Victoria felt like lead in her heart, the return of uncertainty. Once more she was an outcast. No work. Once more she must ask herself what to do and find no answer.
The river glittered and rose and fell, as if inviting her. Victoria shuddered. It was not yet time for that. She turned back and, with downcast eyes, made for St James's Park. There she sat for a moment watching a pelican flop on his island, the waterfowl race and dive. The problem of life was upon her now and where was the solution? Must I tread the mill once more? thought Victoria. The vision of agencies again, of secretaries courteous or rude, of waits and hopes and despairs, all rushed at her and convinced her of the uselessness of it all. She was alone, always alone, because she wanted to be free, to be happy, to live. Perhaps she had been wrong after all to resist the call of the river. She shuddered once more. A couple passed her with hands interlocked, eyes gazing into eyes. No, life must hold forth to her something to make it worth while. She was cold. She got up and, with nervous determination, walked quickly towards the gate.
The first thing to be done was to get quit of all the horrors of the day, to cut away the wreckage. She dared not stay at Castle Street. She would be tracked. She would have to give evidence. She couldn't do it. She couldn't. Victoria having regained her coolness was in no wise uncertain as to her course of action. The first thing to do was for her to lose herself in London, and that so deep that none could drag her out and force her to tell her story. She must change her lodgings then. Nothing could be easier, as she had already given Miss Briggs notice. In fact the best thing to do would be to keep up the fiction of her departure for France.
CHAPTER XIII
Victoria entered her room. It was in the condition that speaks of departure. Her trunks were packed and corded, all save a small suitcase which still gaped, showing spaces among the sundries that the skilled packer collects in the same bundle. Every drawer was open; the bed was unmade; the room was littered with newspapers and nondescript articles discarded at the last moment. Victoria rang her bell and quickly finished packing the suitcase with soap, washing gloves, powder-puffs and such like. As she turned the key Miss Briggs opened the door.
'Oh, Miss Briggs,' said Victoria quietly, 'I find that I must go down by an earlier train; I must be at Charing Cross in an hour; I'm going now.'
'Yes, mum,' said Miss Briggs without interest. 'Shall I tell the greengrocer to come now, mum?'
'Yes please, Miss Briggs; here are the seven shillings.'
Miss Briggs accepted the money without a word. It had formed the basis of a hot argument between her and her tenant; she considered herself entitled to one week's rent in lieu of notice but Victoria's new born sense of business had urged the fact that she had had two days notice; this had saved her three shillings. Miss Briggs laboured under a sense of injury, so she did not see Victoria to the door.
This was well, for Victoria was able to pay the greengrocer and to get rid of him in an artistic manner by sending him to post an empty envelope addressed to an imaginary person, while she directed the cabman to Paddington; this saved her awkward questions and would leave Miss Briggs under the impression that she had gone to Charing Cross.
At Paddington station she left her luggage in the cloak-room and went out to find lodgings. Her quest was short, for she had ceased to be particular, so that within an hour she was installed in an imposing ground floor front in the most respectable house in Star Street. The district was not so refined as Portsea Place, but the house seemed clean and the quarters were certainly cheaper; eleven and six covered both them and the usual breakfast.
Victoria surveyed the room in a friendly manner; there was nothing attractive or repulsive in it; it was clean; the furniture was almost exactly similar to that which graced her lodgings in Portsea Place and in Castle Street. The landlady seemed a friendly body, and had already saved Victoria a drain on her small store by sending her son, an out-of-work furrier's hand, to fetch the luggage in a handcart. Remembering that she was a fugitive from justice she gave her name as Miss Ferris.
Victoria returned from a hurried tea, unpacked with content the trunk that should have followed her to France. She was almost exhilarated by the feeling of safety which enveloped her like comforting warmth. The day was blithe in unison. She felt quite safe, every movement of her flight having been so skilfully calculated; she was revelling therefore in her escape from danger, the deepest and truest of all joys.
The next morning, however, found her in the familiar mood of wondering what was to become of her. After an extremely inferior breakfast which brought down upon the already awed Mrs Smith well deserved reproaches, Victoria investigated the Telegraph columns with the usual negative results and, in the resultant acid frame of mind, went through her accounts and discovered that her possessions amounted to twelve pounds, eight shillings and four pence. This was a terrible blow; the outfit for the interview with Carrel and the trip to France had dug an enormous hole in Victoria's resources.
'I must hurry up and find something,' said Victoria to herself. 'Twelve pounds eight and fourpence – say twelve weeks – and then?'
The next morning reconciled her a little to her fate. True, the paper yielded no help, but a lengthy account of Carrel's preliminary examination occupied three quarters of a column in the police court report. It was apparently a complicated case, for Carrel had been remanded and bail refused. The report did not yield her much information. Apparently Carrel was indicted for other counts than the exporting of the dancing girls to Vichy, for nine women had appeared. Victoria had quite a thrill of horror when she read the line in which the well schooled reporter dismissed the evidence of Miss 'S,' by saying that Miss 'S – ' here gave an account of her experience in the green room of the Folichon-Palace in 1902.' The baldness of the statement was appalling in its suggestiveness. She had been called, apparently, but no comment was made on her non-appearance.
'That's all over,' said Victoria with decision, throwing the newspaper down. She rose from the armchair, shook herself and opened the window to let out the smell of breakfast. Then she put on her hat and gloves and decided to have a walk to cheer herself up. Mindful that she was in a sense a fugitive, she avoided the Marble Arch and made for the Park through the desolate respectability of Lancaster Gate.
She made for the South East, unconsciously guided by the hieratic shot tower of Westminster. It was early; the freshness of May still bejewelled with dew drops the crisp new grass; the gravel, stained dark by moisture, hardly crunched under her feet, but gave like springy turf. Forgetting her depleted exchequer Victoria stepped briskly as if on business bent, looking at nothing but absorbing as through her skin the kisses of the western wind. At Hyde Park Corner she turned into St James's Park, and, passing the barracks, received with an old familiar thrill a covert smile from the handsome sentry. After all she was young, and it was good somehow to be once more smiled at by a soldier. Soldiers, soldiers – stupid perhaps, but could one help liking them? Victoria let her thoughts run back to Dicky – poor old wasted Dicky – and the Colonel and his liver, and Bobby, who would never be anything but Bobby, and Major Cairns too. Victoria felt a tiny pang as she thought of the Major. He was hardly young or handsome but strong, reassuring. She suddenly felt his lips on her neck again as she gazed rapidly at the dark lift on the horizon of the coast of Araby. He was a good fellow, the Major. She would like to meet him again.
She had reached Westminster Bridge. Her thoughts fell away from the comfortable presence of Major Cairns. Hunched up against the parapet sat the old vagrant she had seen there before, motionless, his rags lifting in the breeze, puffs of smoke coming at long intervals from his short clay pipe. Victoria shuddered; it seemed as if her life were bound to a wheel which brought her back inexorably to the same spot until the time came for her to lose there energy and life itself. She turned quickly towards the Embankment, and, as she rounded the curve, caught a glimpse of the old vagrant. The symbol of time had not moved.
Another twenty minutes of quick walking had brought her to the City. She was no longer fearful of it; indeed she almost enjoyed its surge and roar. Log that she was, tossed on a stormy sea, she could not help feeling the joy of life in its buffeting. Not even the dullness and eternal length of Queen Victoria Street, which seems in the City, like Gower Street, indefinite and interminable, robbed her of the curious exultation which she felt whenever she entered the precincts. Here at least was life and doing; ugly doing perhaps, but things worthy of the name of action. At Mansion House she stopped for a moment to look at the turmoil: drays, motorbuses, cabs, cycles, entangled and threatening everywhere the little running black mites of humanity.
As Victoria passed the Bank and walked up Princes Street she felt hungry, for it was nearly one o'clock. She turned up a lane and stopped before a small shop which arrested her attention by its name above the door. It was called 'The Rosebud Café,' every letter of its name being made up of tiny roses; all the woodwork was painted white; the door was glazed and faced with pink curtains; pink half blinds lined the two small windows, nothing appearing through them except, right and left, two tall palms. 'The Rosebud' had a freshness and newness that pleased her; and, as it boldly announced luncheons and teas, she pushed the white door open and entered. The room was larger than the outside gave reason to think, for it was all in depth. It was pretty in a style suggesting a combination of Watteau, Dresden China, and the top of a biscuit tin. All the woodwork was white, relieved here and there by pink drapery and cunningly selected water colours of more or less the same tint. From the roof, at close intervals, hung little baskets of paper roses. The back part of the room was glazed over, which showed that it lay below the well of a tall building. Symmetrically ranged were little tables, some large enough for four persons, mostly however meant for two, but Victoria noticed that they were all untenanted; in fact the room was empty, save for a woman who on her hands and knees was loudly washing the upper steps of a staircase leading into a cellar, and for a tall girl who stood on a ladder at the far end of the room critically surveying a picture she had just put up.
Victoria hesitated for a moment. The girl on the ladder looked round and jumped down. She was dressed in severe black out of which her long white face, mantling pink at the cheeks, emerged like a flower; indeed Victoria wondered whether she had been selected as an attendant because she was in harmony with the colour scheme of the shop. The girl was quite charming out of sheer insignificance; her fair hair untidily crowned her with a halo marred by flying wisps. Her little pink mouth, perpetually open and pouting querulous over three white upper teeth, showed annoyance at being disturbed.
'We aren't open,' she said with much decision. It was clearly quite bad enough to have to look forward to work on the morrow without anticipating the evil.
'Oh,' said Victoria, 'I'm sorry, I didn't know.'
'We open on Monday,' said the fair girl. 'Sharp.'
'Yes?' answered Victoria vaguely interested as one is in things newly born. 'This is a pretty place, isn't it?'
A flicker of animation. The fair girl's blue eyes opened wider. 'Rather,' she said. 'I did the water colours,' she explained with pride.
'How clever of you!' exclaimed Victoria. 'I couldn't draw to save my life.'
'Coloured them up, I mean,' the girl apologised grudgingly. 'It was a long job, I can tell you.'
Victoria smiled. 'Well,' she said, 'I must come back on Monday and see it finished if I'm in the City.'
'Oh, aren't you in the City?' asked the girl. 'West End?'
'No, not exactly West End,' said Victoria. 'I'm not doing anything just now.'
The fair girl gave her a glance of faint suspicion.
'Oh, aye, I see,' she said slowly, thoughtfully considering the rather full lines of Victoria's figure.
Victoria had not the slightest idea of what she saw. 'I'm looking out for a berth,' she remarked casually.
'Oh, are you?' said the girl with renewed animation. 'What's your line?'
'Anything,' said Victoria. She looked round the pink and white shop. A feeling of weariness had suddenly come over her. The woman at the top of the steps had backed away a little, and was rhythmically swishing a wet rag on the linoleum. Under her untidy hair her neck gleamed red and fleshy, touched here and there with beads of perspiration. Victoria took her in as unconsciously as she would an ox patiently straining at the yoke. To and fro the woman's body rocked, like a machine wound up to work until its parts drop out worn and useless.
'Ever done any waiting?' The voice of the girl almost made Victoria jump. She saw herself being critically inspected.
'No, never,' she faltered. 'That's to say, I would, if I got a billet.'
'Mm,' said the girl, eyeing her over. 'Mm.'
Victoria's heart beat unreasonably. 'Do you know where I can get a job?' she asked.
'Well,' said the girl very deliberately, 'the fact of the matter is, that we're short here. We had a letter this morning. One of our girls left home yesterday. Says she can't come. They don't know where she is.'
'Yes,' said Victoria, too excited to speculate as to the implied tragedy.
'If you like, you can see the manager,' said the girl. 'He's down there.' She pointed to the cellar.
'Thank you so much,' said Victoria, 'it's awfully kind of you.' The fair girl walked to the banisters. 'Mr Stein,' she cried shrilly into the darkness.
There was a rumble, a sound like the upsetting of a chair, footsteps on the stairs. A head appeared on a level with the floor.
'Vat is it?' growled a voice.
'New girl; wants to be taken on.'
'Vell, take her on,' growled the voice. 'You are ze 'ead vaitress, gn, you are responsible.'
Victoria had just time to see the head, perfectly round, short-haired, white faced, cloven by a turned up black moustache, when it vanished once more. The Germanic 'gn' at the end of the first sentence puzzled her.
'Sulky beast,' murmured the girl. 'Anyhow, that's settled. You know the wages, don't you? Eight bob a week and your lunch and tea.'
'Eight.' gasped Victoria. 'But I can't live on that.'
'My, you are a green 'un,' smiled the girl. 'With a face like that you'll make twenty-five bob in tips by the time we've been on for a month.' She looked again at Victoria not unkindly.
'Tips,' said Victoria reflectively. Awful. But after all, what did it matter.
'All right,' she said, 'put me down.'
The girl took her name and address. 'Half-past eight sharp on Monday,' she said. ''cos it's opening day. Usual time half-past nine, off at four two days a week. Other days seven. Nine o'clock mid and end.'
Victoria stared a little. This was a business woman.
'Sorry,' said the girl, 'must leave you. Got a lot more to do to-day. My name's Laura. It'll have to be Lottie though. Nothing like Lottie to make fellows remember you.'
'Remember you?' asked Victoria puzzled.
'Lord, yes, how you going to make your station if they don't remember you?' said Lottie snappishly. 'You'll learn right enough. You let 'em call you Vic. Tell 'em to. You'll be all right. And get yourself a black business dress. We supply pink caps and aprons; charge you sixpence a week for washing. You get a black openwork blouse, mind you, with short sleeves. Nothing like it to make your station.'
'What's a station?' asked Victoria, more bewildered than ever.
'My, you are a green 'un! A station's your tables. Five you get. We'll cut 'em down when they begin to come in. What you've got to do is to pal up with the fellows; then they'll stick to you, see? Regulars is what you want. The sort that give no trouble 'cos you know their orders right off and leave their twopence like clockwork, see? But never you mind: you'll learn.' Thereupon Lottie tactfully pushed Victoria towards the door.