“Today’s Friday, isn’t it? Why not come round on Monday evening. I’m having a few friends in then, people you must meet. Till then I really feel that I must be alone. I’ve such a head, dear.” And she passed her hand wearily over her brow.

“All right,” said Mr. Fatigay after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps I may look in in the morning for Emily, to take her for a walk, and perhaps see you for a moment at the same time.”

“Of course, she’ll have a good deal to do in helping the char,” answered Amy, who noticed with disapproval the sudden beaming of the chimp’s ingenuous countenance. But she felt it would look rather bad to refuse without good reason, so she added, “Still, she might be able to go with you in the afternoons. Only I don’t want her spoiled. One must begin as one means to go on. Well, good-bye, dear. I’m really terribly tired.”

And with that Mr. Fatigay took his leave.

Emily had not done looking after him, nor had Amy done peeping here and there in the uneasy aimlessness which overcomes one when, returning after a long absence, one reestablishes one’s rapport with a confusing sunny room, when that black daffodil, the telephone, pealed goldenly through the dusty shafts of sunlight, and Amy (no mother hearing her only child squall could have moved on a quicker instinct) swooped down upon it and took it to her bosom. The rapid but quite natural transition from nerviness and fatigue to a pleasurable excitement was perhaps a shade too frankly realized; a hint of lingering lethargy would have been a seemly compliment to Mr. Fatigay, and to not so much the sincerity of her plea of weariness, for it was sincere enough, but to its depth and stability. What had been important enough to occasion the rather curt dismissal of her lover should hardly have evaporated so quickly at the prospect of speaking to a friend. But Emily — who, not coming of a gregarious stock, had no conception of the thrilling beauty of the telephone, through whose ebony and Plutonic lips our friends address us in voices revived from nonexistence, Lazarus-voices cold and earthy as those of the temporarily awakened dead — Emily felt that Amy had been shamming her headache, and eyed her frowningly. It was hardly the first time, nor was it destined to be the last by many, when the puritanical chimp, seeing Amy at her most ordinary, set her down as being positively criminal instead of simply womanly.

“Now, Emily,” said Amy, replacing the receiver, “two or three friends of mine are coming round to tea, and they will probably stay to dinner, and there may be some other people coming afterwards. This means that every single piece of glass and china in the place must be thoroughly washed before teatime, for the dust settles on it. So you’d better start at once.”

Emily nodded obediently, for she had no desire to accept Amy’s hospitality without giving her ample value in labor in return, and, taking off her sunbonnet, she held it out, and looked about her in a manner expressive of a desire to know where to put her things, that she might prepare herself immediately for work.

“You’d better come up here,” said Amy, who had found out some time ago that the chimp understood all that was said to her, though she continued to address her in a few monosyllables except when they were alone. “This is where you’ll sleep. You can use the straw in that packing case in the corner.” And, as she said this, she pushed Emily into a pokey little garret where lumber and boxes were stored.

“Come down now, and I’ll show you the scullery,” she went on. “You can boil some water, and begin, while I go out and get you some black dresses and white caps and aprons to wear in the afternoons. Then you’ll look more or less respectable when you open the door to visitors. I think, by the way, I’ll call you Smithers in future. Emily sounds hardly suitable for one of your species and position.”

Emily followed with a sigh. She remembered those distant days when she had studied so absorbedly under Mr. Fatigay’s tutelage for the position he had said she was to hold in London. So this was what he had meant her for! The poor chimp sighed once more, then, shrugging her shoulders, she took up the kettle and turned to the ugly sink, accepting, as a now chronic condition of her heart, that painful bursting feeling from which no amount of sighing could afford any real relief.

The next day, though, when her spirits were just at their lowest ebb, Mr. Fatigay appeared shortly after lunch, and said he had come to take Emily for a walk, at which the world seemed suddenly transformed for her, and the enraptured creature, having hurriedly pulled on her shady bonnet, trustingly put her hand in his, and they set forth in the summery afternoon to see the sights of London.

It was that day, of all the year, when the barrowmen who sell sickly roots of daisies do their briskest barter with the sentimental wives of Camden Town; when husbands lean out upon windowsills, and the bugs crawl out upon walls; that day when children swarm in noisy dirtiness on the first hot paving stones of the season, and when the grimiest scrap of newspaper, trundling in warm idleness before the smelly wind, seems to move in a sensuous ritual dance.

The bus they mounted, being either late or sensitive to the spirit of the day, swung wildly down into Camden Town, and before long Mr. Fatigay, who had not Amy’s keen perception and had not guessed in over a year what she had seen in less than a month, the extent of Emily’s understanding, but who, nevertheless, partly from his natural openness of heart, and partly in unconscious response to her intelligent glances, always spoke to her as if he was aware of it, was pointing out scenes familiar to him in his youth.

“Look, Emily!” he said.