ooked about with a little shiver. Then she sank into
the chintz-covered chair that was the one bit of England in the sombre
chamber. She took off the dusty black velvet hat, passed a hand over her
hair with a gesture that was more tired than tidy, and sat back, her
eyes shut, her body inert, her head sagging on her breast.

The voices in the back of the house had ceased. From the kitchen came
the slipslop of Tina's slovenly feet. Mary Gowd opened her eyes and sat
up very straight as Tina stood in the doorway. There was nothing
picturesque about Tina. Tina was not one of those olive-tinted,
melting-eyed daughters of Italy that one meets in fiction. Looking at
her yellow skin and her wrinkles and her coarse hands, one wondered
whether she was fifty, or sixty, or one hundred, as is the way with
Italian women of Tina's class at thirty-five.

Ah, the signora was tired! She smiled pityingly. Tired! Not at all, Mary
Gowd assured her briskly. She knew that Tina despised her because she
worked like a man.

"Something fine for supper?" Mary Gowd asked mockingly. Her Italian was
like that of the Romans themselves, so soft, so liquid, so perfect.

Tina nodded vigorously, her long earrings shaking.

"_Vitello_"--she began, her tongue clinging lovingly to the double _l_
sound--"_Vee-tail-loh_--"

"Ugh!" shuddered Mary Gowd. That eternal veal and mutton, pinkish,
flabby, sickening!

"What then?" demanded the outraged Tina.

Mary Gowd stood up, making gestures, hat in hand.

"Clotted cream, with strawberries," she said in English, an unknown
language, which always roused Tina to fury. "And a steak--a real steak
of real beef, three inches thick and covered with onions fried in
butter. And creamed chicken, and English hothouse tomatoes, and fresh
peaches and little hot rolls, and coffee that isn't licorice and ink,
and--and--"

Tina's dangling earrings disappeared in her shoulders. Her outspread
palms were eloquent.

"Crazy, these English!" said the shoulders and palms. "Mad!"

Mary Gowd threw her hat on the bed, pushed aside a screen and busied
herself with a little alcohol stove.

"I shall prepare an omelet," she said over her shoulder in Italian.
"Also, I have here bread and wine."

"Ugh!" granted Tina.

"Ugh, veal!" grunted Mary Gowd. Then, as Tina's flapping feet turned
away: "Oh, Tina! Letters?"

Tina fumbled at the bosom of her gown, thought deeply and drew out a
crumpled envelope. It had been opened and clums