the splashing of a young
swimmer, but buoyancy would certainly come out of it. For the present
there was mainly no great alteration of the fact that when she did
things according to her own idea they were not, as yet and seriously
judged, worth the devil, as Madame Carre said, and when she did them
according to that of her instructress were too apt to be a gross parody
of that lady's intention. None the less she gave glimpses, and her
glimpses made him feel not only that she was not a fool--this was small
relief--but that he himself was not.

He made her stick to her English and read Shakespeare aloud to him. Mrs.
Rooth had recognised the importance of apartments in which they should
be able to receive so beneficent a visitor, and was now mistress of a
small salon with a balcony and a rickety flower-stand--to say nothing of
a view of many roofs and chimneys--a very uneven waxed floor, an empire
clock, an _armoire a glace_, highly convenient for Miriam's posturings,
and several cupboard doors covered over, allowing for treacherous gaps,
with the faded magenta paper of the wall. The thing had been easily
done, for Sherringham had said: "Oh we must have a sitting-room for our
studies, you know, and I'll settle it with the landlady," Mrs. Rooth had
liked his "we"--indeed she liked everything about him--and he saw in
this way that she heaved with no violence under pecuniary obligations so
long as they were distinctly understood to be temporary. That he should
have his money back with interest as soon as Miriam was launched was a
comfort so deeply implied that it only added to intimacy. The window
stood open on the little balcony, and when the sun had left it Peter and
Miriam could linger there, leaning on the rail and talking above the
great hum of Paris, with nothing but the neighbouring tiles and tall
tubes to take account of. Mrs. Rooth, in limp garments much ungirdled,
was on the sofa with a novel, making good her frequent assertion that
she could put up with any life that would yield her these two
conveniences. There were romantic works Peter had never read and as to
which he had vaguely wondered to what class they were addressed--the
earlier productions of M. Eugene Sue, the once-fashionable compositions
of Madame Sophie Gay--with which Mrs. Rooth was familiar and which she
was ready to enjoy once more if she could get nothing fresher. She had
always a greasy volume tucked under her while her nose was bent upon the
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