“This is where the two lads sleep,” said Mrs. Nadin. “You’ll keep this floor right, and I’ll inspect it once a week; it’s too near heaven for an old sinner like me ta come often.”
One window was shut and the other open, and Flo guessed that the bed near the open window was Bert’s. That was in the end, too, which looked out like her own towards the lake.
Mrs. Nadin set off down again. Then Flo was shown round the first floor; into the room where Mrs. Nadin and “the old fool” slept, into “Young Dot’s” room, into the spare room “which doesna spare us from work nohow”, and into the bathroom, which was as large as any of the other rooms, having evidently been made out of a bedroom. “When we’re tight we fix a bed up ’ere an’ all, and all goo mucky,” Mrs. Nadin explained. Flo could not understand why they should ever need more sleeping rooms than there were already without the bathroom. By contrast with the two poky rooms in Balloon Street, Barrow, the farmhouse seemed to her colossal.
“You’ll non need ta worry ’bout bein’ short o’ work,” said Mrs. Nadin. “An’ non o’ your shoving dust under carpets an’ spiders inta cracks. If I find any of those goings on’ you’ll get th’ dust served up for your dinner an’ spiders with it.”
“Ough!” said Flo involuntarily.
When they got back into the kitchen a slim young woman was there drawing off white woollen gloves.
“Huh, you come back some time,” Mrs. Nadin barked promptly. “When I was your age if I’d ’a stayed out as you do it would have bin down with my drawers an’ my bare bottom spanked.”
“Thank heaven I wasn’t born in those days,” said the young woman.
“You’d find you were back in ’em if I had my way,” the older woman commented; and then with a complete change of tone, “Who’ve you seen?”
“Nobody very interesting,” was the slightly drawled reply.
“Then what have you bin gawpin’ at . . . nothin’?” demanded her mother with increasing aggressiveness. “If I stayed out, I’d stay out for summat.”
“Who’s this?” the young woman asked.
Flo saw a slight resemblance to Mrs. Nadin; small, somewhat crowded features, thin lips, and eyes inclined to glare.
“The new girl,” said Mrs. Nadin briefly. “Florence; though whether she was christened, or got it like a dog does, God knows. This ’ere’s Dot; should have bin born a duchess, but I hadna copped the right feller.”
Dot said, “How d’you do?” and began to loosen her coat, which was brown—a good Harris.
“If you want your things upstairs you’d better carry ’em,” said Mrs, Nadin. “See Matilda, or Gertrude, Dot?”
Flo thankfully took her costume coat off the hook and her bass and lugged them to the attic. She shut the door and sank on the ottoman. Suddenly she thought of the chintz and of how she was creasing it. She tried to smooth it and then crossed to the window. The catch was back and the frame went up unexpectedly easily so that the weights bumped in their slots. She poked her head out carelessly and abruptly gripped the sill ridge, taken unawares by the height. Dusk had thickened, making the ground seem a tremendous distance below. But after a moment she recovered, and instead of looking straight down she looked outward, and there was the lake, with a white sheen on, as if some of the last light from the sky had fallen there and would continue to glow through the night. Between the house and the water there was a hundred yards of gently sloping meadow, and then a thick hedge of sallow canes. Beyond the water was a dark cloud-like bank of trees with a hill rising behind. As Flo stared intently a shot smashed the silence, the flat, sharp report echoing distinctly three times away into distance. Totally unexpected, the shot made her start, and but for her grip on the sill ledge she might have fallen. She felt a brief recurrence of fear and drew back, and then leaned out again, forgetful, for from behind the sallows had whirled up a great flock of birds that flickered whitely against the opposite hillside. There was a brief crying which told her that sea-birds were there, and in the silence that seemed to close in on the echoes of the shot like a lid she believed that she heard the rush of wings; but it was very faint, and perhaps it was a wind current moving in the grass, though up there she could not feel it. For several minutes she did not move, fascinated by this unexpected shattering of a peacefulness which at first she had thought to be utter stagnation, complete emptiness. Now she sensed a mysteriousness, and was dimly aware that in the dusk there was an abundance of life that at present she did not know or understand; and she wondered if she would ever come to know about it.