XXII
Avondale Road was an obscure corner of the suburb—obscure, for it had just sprung into existence. The scaffolding that had built it now littered an adjoining field, where in a few months it would rise about Horsely Gardens, whose red gables and tiled upper walls will correspond unfailingly with those of Avondale Road. Nowhere in this neighbourhood could Esther detect signs of eighteen pounds a year. Scanning the Venetian blinds of the single drawing-room window, she said to herself, “Hot joint today, cold the next.” She noted the trim iron railings and the spare shrubs, and raising her eyes she saw the tiny gable windows of the cupboard-like rooms where the single servant kept in these houses slept.
A few steps more brought her to 41, the corner house. The thin passage and the meagr
