Dolores by Ivy Compton-Burnett Page B

husband at any cost.”
    â€œMy dear Sophia, Herbert is only a few months younger than I am. He was asking the other day which of us was the elder. The difference is so small, that he never remembers which way it is.”
    â€œIs it really so small as that?” said Mrs Hutton. “It hardly seems possible, does it? Well, we must be going down, dear. Our menfolk must be nearly home. We have had such a pleasant evening. It has been quite a break for Dolores after her term’s work.”
    In the drawing-room Dr Cassell was found seated on the edge of his chair, and leaning towards Mr Billing, with hand upraised; his wife’s eyes fastened on his face, and the Blackwood family listening in the background—that is to say, Lettice listening; Elsa exposing his mannerisms with silent mimicry; and Mr Blackwood twirling his moustache as an effort againstsleepiness. Dolores and her stepmother drove to the parsonage in silence; and parted on the threshold for the night, the latter to win the Reverend Cleveland to some difficult mirth, by her sallies at the expense of her kindred.

Chapter IV.
    Before you is a room whose innocence of toy or draping holds it with the figures within it in subtle sympathy. Within it are some women who in some way stay your glance; who carry in their bearing some suggested discord with convention—a something of greater than the common earnestness and ease. Those who are laughing give unchecked heart to their laughter. The one who is distributing cups of some beverage, does it as the unobtrusive service of a comrade.
    The scene has a meaning which marks it a scene of its day. It is the common room of the teaching staff in a college for women.
    The dispenser of the beverage is crossing the room with movements of easy briskness. She is a woman of forty, older at a glance; with a well-cut, dark - skinned face, iron - grey hair whose waving is conquered by its drawing to the knot in the neck, and dark eyes keen under thick, black brows. That is Miss Cliff, the lecturer in English literature.
    The companion to whom she is handing a cup—the lecturer in classics, Miss Butler,—and who takes it with a word in a vein of pleasantry, is a small, straight woman, a few years younger; whose parted hair leaves the forehead fully shown, and whose hazel eyes have humour in their rapid glancing.
    â€œI cannot but see it as ungenerous to brew the coffee with such skill,” she is saying; “in purposed contrast to my concoction of last week.”
    â€œA meanly revengeful comment on my general manner of brewing it,” said Miss Cliff. “Well, you may put its success down to my being out of practice. It is the only reason I can think of for it.”
    â€œI remember the last time you made it,” said a genial, guttural voice at the side of Miss Butler—the voice of Miss Dorrington, the lecturer in German, and a strong illustration of the power of moral attractiveness over the physical opposite; which in her case depended on uncouth features, an eruptive skin, and general ungainliness. “It was that week when you kept getting ill, and at the end I had to make it for you.”
    â€œHoist with your own petard?” said Miss Butler, smiling at Miss Cliff.
    â€œI think it is a great accomplishment to make good coffee,” said Miss Cliff, in a consciously demure tone; “a very seemly, womanly accomplishment. I cannot feel justified in relaxing myefforts to acquire it, if you will all be generous. Cookery, you know, is the greatest attainment for a woman.”
    A short, quaint - looking, middle - aged lady, with a pathetic manner which somehow was comical in its union with her calling of mathematical teacher, looked up with a slow smile. “I fear we are but a boorish set, if that be true,” she said.
    â€œOh, I know it is true, Miss Greenlow,” said Miss Cliff, meeting Miss Butler’s eyes. “I read it in a book, so of course it was