Sally's nerves. Everything her mother did now
annoyed Sally. The slow motions, the awkward way in which her fingers
turned to thumbs, the shortsightedness that made her unable to thread a
needle or read a paper except through an old magnifying glass, the
general air of debility and discouragement. Sally felt furious with her
all the time--"Old fool ... old fool!" she would frantically murmur to
herself; and then would fall again into despair at her own sensation of
frustrate youth. She had lost love for her mother, had no pity to give
in its place; and only awoke in these moments of dreadful exasperation
to the sense that she was still dependent upon Mrs. Minto for her
existence. During this tea-time, while her mother mutely ate bread and
margarine, Sally was away in the clouds, dreaming of all that her
windfall was to produce. It was to produce beauty, opportunity,
happiness. So much for a pound to do! Sally was so impatient to call on
Mrs. Perce that she could hardly eat anything or drink her tea.

"You _are_ worritting and fidgetting, Sally," cried Mrs. Minto,
peevishly. "Sit still, there's a good girl. I don't know what's come to
my 'ead. It feels all funny inside, and if I put my hand there it's like
I got a bruise. And yet I don't remember knockin' myself anywheres, and
I can't understand it at all, because it's not as if I'd taken anything
to disagree with me; and yet there it is, a nasty pain all inside my
'ead and a feeling as though I'd got a bruise on the outside. I was
telling Mrs. ... oh, dear, what is her name?... Mrs. ... Roberson about
it, and she said that's what her 'usband used to suffer from, and ...
_he_ took...."

Sally ignored the rest of the speech. Her mother rambled on; and Sally
looked at the clock. She'd get to Hornsey Road about six. That would be
time enough. There would be the Clancy kids playing in the doorway, so
she would go straight upstairs to Mrs. Perce; and she would say....

Self-absorbed, both went mechanically on with the unappetising meal.
Upstairs Toby walked once more into his own room; and then came running
heavily down the stairs and past their door and then right down to the
street. Sally's heart was in a flutter, and her eyes flew once again to
the clock. It was so early for Toby to be going out. She would not see
him, then. She would not see him, and all her excitement was gone like
an exploded toy balloon. The heart was taken out of her enterprise. He
was going out: h