The Town in Bloom Read Online Free Page B

woman before we finished eating.
    Molly and Lilian then hurried off to their theatre. I had coffee in the lounge, studied the Stage , and was firmly talked to by Evangeline Esmond – who turned out to be one of the Club bores; her triumphs, when not fictitious, had all been in long ago No. 3 touring companies and she now eked out a small income by giving lessons. With me, first impressions have so often been wrong ones.
    I then went to bed, wrote in my journal, and slept until nearly midnight. I woke to see light above the partition between my cubicle and Molly’s and to hear her say: ‘Do you think that small mouse will be asleep?’ Then there was a thump, as if someone had dropped something heavy, and a voice I did not know said, ‘Blast!’ after which Lilian said: ‘Well, she’ll be awake now, all right.’ A moment later there was a tap on my door.
    ‘Pray, Mistress Mouse, are you within?’ said Molly, thus presenting me with my nickname – perhaps suggested bymy smallness; no one could have thought me timid. I leaned from my bed and undid the catch of my door. Then Molly came in and switched the light on.
    ‘Ah, good child, you sleep with your blind up and your window open. That’s a great help to those of us who don’t have windows. Are you hungry?’
    ‘ I am,’ said the voice that had said ‘Blast’.
    ‘You shall have something in a minute, Frobisher,’ said Molly. ‘Do you like Veda bread, Mouse? It’s the mainstay of village life as it keeps fresh so long.’
    I had never tasted Veda bread. I said I would like to.
    ‘Cut some, will you, Lilian?’ called Molly, sitting down on my bed. ‘And don’t overdo the butter as it’s a trifle high.’
    I said I’d understood from the Club prospectus that one must not bring food into cubicles.
    ‘Oh, that !’ said Molly scornfully. ‘Though they do get slightly peeved if one cooks cabbage on the landing gas-rings . Well, child, did you have a pleasant evening?’
    During the next few minutes she undeceived me about Evangeline Esmond, concluding, ‘Sorry as I am for the poor old thing, we can’t have you wasting your money, can we?’
    Lilian was heard calling, ‘Coming over, Frobisher!’ before throwing nourishment over a cubicle partition. Then she came in with some thick slices of brown bread and butter. The bread was malty, almost sticky, and seemed to me marvellous. And the occasion had charm for me, suggesting ‘tuck in the dorm’. Happy though I had been with my aunt and at my high school, I had sometimes hankered to go to a boarding school.
    ‘How’s that bed?’ asked Lilian. ‘Some of them are terrible.’
    I said mine seemed all right. I had not yet begun to mind what beds were like.
    ‘My friend Madam Lily de Luxe is a trifle fussy,’ said Molly. (So Lilian must already have had her occasionally used nick name. Molly’s came later, on a never-to-be-forgotten occasion.)
    ‘You must be thinking we look ghastly,’ said Lilian and explained that they seldom bothered to put their full off-stage make-ups on after taking their stage make-ups off. ‘It’s such a waste of time when we’re coming home on a dull bus.’
    I asked if they ever went out to supper with admirers who waited at the stage door.
    ‘You’ve been reading about the days of the Stage Door Johnnies,’ said Molly. ‘Nobody waits outside our stage door but sentimental girls and kids wanting autographs.’
    From the landing came a shout of ‘Kettle boiling!’
    ‘That could be ours,’ Lilian said, and went to investigate. I learned that kettles queued up for gas-rings; an owner, removing a boiling one, would replace it with the next in the queue. Lilian returned to say their kettle had just been put on, so they went to undress while it boiled.
    Shortly after that, a deep voice said: ‘My God, Frobisher, how that man kissed me in the taxi!’
    Molly shouted: ‘Kindly moderate your language, Macgregor. We have an innocent young mouse in our midst.’
    ‘Oh,