CHAPTER FOUREllie Street was laying the table for dinner. Because Antony and Julia were coming down she had taken extra pains with everything. The flowers were lovely in that old glass épergne—much prettier than silver—and everything had been polished until it shone. The bother was that she couldn’t polish herself. The Dutch mirror between Jimmy’s great grandfather in a stock and his great-grandmother in a primrose satin Empire dress with a turquoise fillet in her hair showed her a very unsparing reflection of Ellie Street—washed-out cotton frock; washed-out, pinched little face without a scrap of bloom or colour; fair hair gone flat and mousy; poking shoulders; a step without spring. No wonder Ronnie watched his pretty nurse.
She must hurry up and get finished here, change into something
