Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/28

 angelic figurehead. Sorrell entered the shop. It was long and rambling and dark, and on dull days a light was needed in the far corner where the circulating library lived in a tall recess. There were no customers in the shop, and the young woman behind the counter, turning a pair of myopic eyes on Sorrell, moved instinctively towards where the daily papers were kept.

"Daily Mail?"

That was the sound she expected Sorrell to make, but he surprised her by uttering other words.

"I believe you run an employment agency."

"Yes," said the girl, "that's so."

She glanced in the direction of a kind of desk or cage at the back of the shop where a woman's head was visible.

"You had better see Miss Hargreaves—there."

As Sorrell approached the desk Miss Hargreaves raised her head, showing him the face of a woman of five and forty. She was thin and wiry, with brown eyes of a hungry hardness, and her nose marked out a little red triangle with its congested lip and network of minute blood-vessels.

"Good morning."

He was a stranger, and to this woman all strange men were interesting, yet as Sorrell looked into her brown eyes he felt himself growing inarticulate.

"I want to consult you"

"You are wanting a servant?"

"No,—that fact is"

But at this moment they were interrupted by the rush of a vital presence into the shop, something highly scented and with a suggestion of the soft friction of silks. Its movements were large and easy and swift, and bringing with them a sense of disturbing and adventurous liveness. It was at Sorrell's elbow, compelling him to glance over his shoulder. He saw the mass of tawny hair, the broad and handsome face, the red mouth, the blue of the eyes. There was something brutal in the face, a vivacity, a sensual energy. He felt as though a gust of wind had blown into the dark shop, and that this large, blonde creature was stifling his courage, overlaying it as though it were a feeble infant. He turned to the cage, only to find that Miss Hargreaves was all eyes for the newcomer. The thin woman was smiling. Her face suggested some inward excitement.