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When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house was in trouble. Arthur was just going to be married. His mother was not well. His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents, was given a paltry, poor job. Miriam was an eternal reproach. He felt he owed himself to her, yet could not give himself. The house, moreover, needed his support. He was pulled in all directions. He was not glad it was his birthday. It made him bitter.

He got to work at eight o’clock. Most of the clerks had not turned up. The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was changing his coat, he heard a voice behind him say:

“Paul, Paul, I want you.”

It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs, her face radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment.

“I want you,” she said.

He stood, at a loss.

“Come on,” she coaxed. “Come before you begin on the letters.”

He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow, “finishing-off” room. Fanny walked before him: her black bodice was short—the waist was under her armpits—and her green-black cashmere skirt seemed very long, as she strode with big strides before the young man, himself so graceful. She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room, where the window opened on to chimney-pots. Paul watched her thin hands and her flat red wrists as she excitedly twitched her white apron, which was spread on the bench in front of her. She hesitated.

“You didn’t think we’d forgot you?” she asked, reproachful.

“Why?” he asked. He had forgotten his birthday himself.

“‘Why,’ he says! ‘Why!’ Why look here!” She pointed to the calendar, and he saw, surrounding the big black number “21,” hundreds of little crosses in black-lead.

“Oh, kisses for my birthday,” he laughed. “How did you know?”

“Yes, you want to know, don’t you?” Fanny mocked, hugely delighted. “There’s one from everybody—except Lady Clara—and two from some. But I shan’t tell you how many I put.”

“Oh, I know, you’re spooney,” he said.

“There you are mistaken!” she cried, indignant. “I could never be so soft.” Her voice was strong and contralto.

“You always pretend to be such a hard-hearted hussy,” he laughed. “And you know you’re as sentimental―”

“I’d rather be called sentimental than frozen meat,” Fanny blurted. Paul knew she referred to Clara, and he smiled.

“Do you say such nasty things about me?” he laughed.

“No, my duck,” the hunchback woman answered, lavishly tender. She was thirty-nine. “No, my duck, because you don’t think yourself a fine figure in marble and us nothing but dirt. I’m as good as you, aren’t I, Paul?” and the question delighted her.

“Why, we’re not better than one another, are we?” he replied.

“But I’m as good as you, aren’t I, Paul?” she persisted daringly.

“Of course you are. If it comes to goodness, you’re better.”

She was rather afraid of the situation. She might get hysterical.

“I thought I’d get here before the others—won’t they say I’m deep! Now shut your eyes―” she said.

“And open your mouth, and see what God sends you,” he continued, suiting action to words, and expecting a piece of chocolate. He heard the rustle of the apron, and a faint clink of metal. “I’m going to look,” he said.

He opened his eyes. Fanny, her long cheeks flushed, her blue eyes shining, was gazing at him. There was a little bundle of paint-tubes on the bench before him. He turned pale.

“No, Fanny,” he said quickly.

“From us all,” she answered hastily.

“No, but―”

“Are they the right sort?” she asked, rocking herself with delight.

“Jove! they’re the best in the catalogue.”

“But they’re the right sorts?” she cried.

“They’re off the little list I’d made to get when my ship came in.” He bit his lip.

Fanny was overcome with emotion. She must turn the conversation.

“They was all on thornsff to do it; they all paid their shares, all except the Queen of Sheba.”6

The Queen of Sheba was Clara.

“And wouldn’t she join?” Paul asked.

“She didn’t get the chance; we never told her; we wasn’t going to have her bossing this show. We didn’t want her to join.”

Paul laughed at the woman.