as I should like. But I must be somewhere; and I'm
perfectly happy here."

As she rose to make tea for Edith (at the poet's table, and with the
poet's brass kettle), she looked, to Edith's critical eyes, most
suspiciously at home. Edith's eyes, alert for literature, roamed over
the bookcases before they settled on the tea-pot (the poet's tea-pot);
but it was the tea-pot that brought her to her point. Did Lucia mix
with the other boarders after all?

"This isn't a bad room," she said. "I suppose you have all your meals
up here?"

"Only tea and breakfast."

"But, my dear girl, where do you lunch and dine?"

"Downstairs, in the dining-room."

"With all the other boarders?"

Lucia smiled. "Yes, all of them. You see we can't very well turn any
of them out."

"Really, Lucia, before you do things like this you might stop to
consider how your friends must feel about it."

"Why should they feel anything? It's all right, Edith, really it is."

"Right for you to take your meals with these dreadful people? You
can't say they're not dreadful, Lucia; for they are."

"They're not half so dreadful as you might suppose. In fact you've no
idea how nice they can be, some of them. Indeed I don't know one of
them that isn't kind and considerate and polite in some way. Yes,
polite. They're all inconceivably polite. And do you know, they all
want me to stay on; and I've half a mind to stay."

"Oh, no, my dear, you're not going to stay. I've come to carry you off
the very minute we've finished tea. Sophia should have known better
than to bring you here."

"Poor little Sophie. If she can stand it, I might."

"That doesn't follow at all. And if you can stand it, your relations
can't. So make up your mind that you're going back with me."

"It's extremely kind of you; but I should hurt Sophie's feelings
terribly if I went. Why should I go?"

"Because it isn't a fit place for you to be in. To begin with, I don't
suppose they feed you properly."

"You can't say I look the worse for it."

No, certainly she couldn't; for Lucia looked better than she had done
for many months. In the fine air of Hampstead she had been white and
languid and depressed; here in Bloomsbury she had a faint colour, and
in spite of her fatigue, looked almost vigorous. What was more, her
face bore out her own account of herself. She had said she was
perfectly happy, and she looked it.

A horrible idea occurred to Edith. But she did not mean to speak of