Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/14

14 I ran away but she called me back.

"Silly child," she said, "it was only from Morton Daly's for some time-payment things I had bought. I won't buy more on time-payment."

Her debts worried her, and she soon became possessed with the idea that she must let part of her flat.

From that time on we worried together—I suggesting, she sometimes complying; I offering help, she sometimes begging me to come down to give it.

We both set to work to try to find tenants.

I used to call Miss Perkins in my thoughts, "The White Priestess."

She was thin and wiry and always dressed in white. It was a belief of hers that white attracted the good spirits, and black the bad. She was a great friend of Naomi's, but she was the sort of being who believed so much in living her own life that we saw very little of her.

From one of my windows I could see her standing at hers in meditation.

One day I spoke to her, not knowing of the seriousness of this performance.

"Is your cold better?" I asked, "I heard you coughing all night."

There was a pause, in which I was made to feel that I was interrupting.

"Yes, thank you. How are you to-day?" she asked.

She very rarely said anything else than that to me. It seemed to be her stock remark and she cared nothing for the answer.

But she loved Naomi. I used to wonder sometimes if it were just ordinary everyday jealousy of my friendship with Naomi that brought the whole thing about.

They had one broom between them—this belonged to Naomi—and it would be:

"Naomi, are you using that broom?" in low, impressive tones.

"No!" Naomi would call on a high note in answer, "Do you want it?"

"Yes, if you can spare it."

Then they used one iron between them and this belonged to the Priestess.

It would be:

"Naomi, I've finished with the iron if you want to use it," and Naomi would call her thanks and go for it.

I, used to a home where there were never less than two irons on a full-flowing gas, and always two or three brooms in the corner of the kitchen ready for use, laughed at these doings—