Without replying the young woman went on looking at herself. For the moment she appeared to be oblivious of them. The fat woman frowned, looked as if she were about to speak; then gave it up and stared out of the window again. The train’s motion joggled her breasts in the loose front of her cheap black dress. All at one she turned on the meek woman. “Where was it you buried your Jim?”
“Pendlebury.”
“Ah!” and she was silent once more, though only for thirty seconds. “’Is name’s Emmott, an’ Monica were a Borden before ’e wed ’er,” she informed Flo, thinking it out slowly. “’E come from Hayfield way, but Monica’s an old Mossite . . . me an’ ’er went to school together. Ask ’er if she remembers Hilda Evans, that’s me as was . . . I’m married now, an’ have been . . . Collin’s my name.”
Having failed to get the information she wanted out of the young woman, the fat woman now seemed determined to give them a complete tale of her own life. Flo looked out and saw houses and felt the train slowing down.
“Preston,” announced Mrs. Collin. “We stop ’ere and I think I’ll get a cup of tea.”
As they ran along the platform she let the window down and laboriously pushed the upper part of herself through, blocking everything as completely as a blind. The tea refreshed her, and as soon as the train started again she returned to attack. “You didn’t tell me what you was,” she said, staring diagonally across.
“I’m in the profession,” said the young woman unexpectedly, and with a certain dignity.
“Eh?” exclaimed Mrs. Collin as if she had not heard right.
“In the profession,” repeated the other with added clearness.
“Oh.” Mrs. Collin looked interrogatively at her friend.
“She says she’s in the profession,” explained the meek woman carefully, her manner somehow suggesting that she would have preferred to have given a nudge with her elbow and have whispered something more concise. Flo, too, wondered what the young woman could mean and the young woman laughed tinklingly, showing big, very white, very regular teeth. Mrs. Collin appeared to be thinking it out; she seemed to suspect that she was being made fun of, but nearly a minute joggled past before she asked rather sombrely:
“What profession do you mean?”
“
“There’s dozens as I knows of,” said the fat woman, scarcely disguising disgust. “There’s dentists an’ doctors an’ architects an’ chemists,” taking a deep breath, “
“Chiropodists,” put in her meek friend helpfully.
“. . . hand chiropodists an’ professors an’ . . . hundreds of ’em.”
“But only one profession;
“She means she’s on the stage,” the meek woman abruptly informed her companion in a very loud whisper across the carriage.
“Then why didn’t she say so?” demanded Mrs. Collin, apparently not at all surprised by this information.
The meek woman did not reply. Flo had been to the pictures many times, but to the theatre only twice; and this was the first actress that she was aware of having seen off the stage. The young woman was obviously proud of her job, and her smartness and self-confidence impressed Flo again. She smiled back at Flo in an open intimate way, as if she guessed that she was being envied. But there was no envy in Mrs. Collin’s tone when she shot out her next question:
“Huh, you’ll be a dancer, eh?”
“No; a singer.”
“Oh, in the chorus. . . . I see.” Mrs. Collin nodded, staring at the young woman all over again, and then added another significant, “I see”, though what she could see Flo could not guess.
“It’s a very interesting life,” said the young woman. “I’m playing on the same bill this week as Gertain Van Blogh . . . you see things and get to know the real people.”
“I bet you do,” agreed Mrs. Collin. “I suppose you get to know the men better than th’ women.”
“Not necessarily; though I’ll say some of them are a bit temperamental . . . think too much of themselves by a bit. But, gee, it’s up to them. When I become a star . . .” She laughed again, very prettily, Flo thought. Flo could imagine her in dark brown satin alone in the footlights laughing in just that way and swinging her golden curls.
“They don’t pay you much on that job; how d’you make enough to live?” demanded Mrs. Collin, entirely unimpressed.
“Oh, we manage all right,” said the young woman easily. “But, of course, if I could marry a prince, I’d take him.”
“I bet you would . . .