Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/33

Rh not know what it was, but something prevented Mrs. Galloway from giving us the sort of talking to I had expected. She is a woman with as nasty a tongue as you would care to meet. I had never before known her lose a chance of using it. And there was a chance! But, instead, there she stood mumchance, and before she had even so much as said a word, Emily and I were off upstairs. I was on the second floor, and Emily was on the third. When I stopped to go into my room I called out to her, “Good night!” but she ran on, and never answered. She was in such a state of mind, what with the fright, and her crying, and the cold biting us through and through while we waited on the doorstep, that all she cared for was to get between the sheets.

In my room most of the girls were wide awake. It was not a large room, so there were only nine of us, and that was including Miss Ashton. She was the senior assistant, a regular frump, thirty if a day. She came to bed a quarter of an hour after we did, and after she had come to bed no one was supposed to talk. If any girl did talk Miss Ashton reported her, and the girl was fined, and half the fine, whatever it was, went into Miss Ashton’s pockets. So, of course—since, sometimes, her pockets were bulging out with our money—no love was lost between us.

When I went in, although I knew that most of the girls