"You'll spoil it if you do," said Prothero.

"Besides spoiling everybody's day," said Jane judiciously.

That brought Laura round. She reflected that, if she sat tight from ten
that evening till two in the morning, she could save their day.

But first she had to finish her paragraph and then to hide it and lock
it up. Then she put the pens and ink on a high shelf out of Mr.
Gunning's reach. He had been known to make away with the materials of
Lolly's detestable occupation when he got the chance. He attributed to
it that mysterious, irritating semblance of poverty in which they moved.

He smiled at her, a happy, innocent smile.

"_That's_ right, _that's_ right. Put it away, my dear, put it away."

"Yes, Papa," said Laura. She took the blouse from Addy Ranger, and she
and Jane Holland disappeared with it into a small inner room. From the
voices that came to him Prothero gathered that Jane Holland was
"buttoning her up the back."

"Don't say," cried Laura, "that it won't meet!"

"Meet? It'll go twice round you. You don't eat enough."

Silence.

"It's no good," he heard Jane Holland say, "not eating. I've tried
both."

"I," said Laura in a voice that penetrated, "over-eat. Habitually."

"I must go," said Mr. Gunning, "and find my hat and stick." His idea now
was that Laura was going to take him for a walk.

Addy Ranger began to talk to Prothero. He liked Addy. She had an amusing
face with a long nose and wide lips, restless and cynical. She confided
to him the trouble of her life, the eternal difficulty of finding
anywhere a permanent job. Addy's dream was permanence.

Then they talked of Laura.

"Do you know what _her_ dream is?" said Addy. "To be able to afford
wine, and chicken, and game and things--for him."

"When you think of her work!" said Nina. "It's charming; it's finished,
to a point. How on earth does she do it?"

"She sits up half the night to do it," said Prothero; "when he isn't
there."

"And it's killing her," said Addy, who had her back to the door.

Mr. Gunning had come in again and he heard her. He gazed at them with a
vague sweetness, not understanding what he heard.

Then Laura ran in among them, in a tremendous hurry. She wasn't ready
yet. It was a maddening, protracted agony, getting Laura off. She had
forgotten to lock the cupboard where the whisky was (a shilling's worth
in a medicine bottle); and poor Papa might find it. Since he had had his
sunstroke you couldn't trust him