There was very little room for Mrs. Moon and Juliana at number ninety.
The poor souls had crowded themselves out with relics of their past, a
pathetic salvage, dragged hap-hazard from the wreck in the first frenzy
of preservation. Dreadful things in marble and gilt and in _papier-maché_
inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, rickety work tables with pouches underneath
them, banner-screens in silk and footstools in Berlin wool-work fought
with each other and with Juliana for standing-room. For Juliana, with her
genius for collision, was always knocking up against them, always getting
in their way. In return, Juliana's place at an oblique angle of the
fireside was disputed by a truculent cabinet with bandy legs. There was a
never-ending quarrel between Juliana and that piece of furniture, in
which Mrs. Moon took the part of the furniture. Her own world had shrunk
to a square yard between the window and the fire. There she sat and
dreamed among her household gods, smiling now and then under the spell of
the dream, or watched her companion with critical disapproval. She had
accepted Juliana's devotion as a proper sacrifice to the gods; but for
Juliana, or Louisa for the matter of that, she seemed to have but little
affection. If anything Louisa was her favourite. Louisa was better
company, to begin with; and Louisa, with her cleverness and her salary
and her general air of indifference and prosperity, raised no questions.
Besides, Louisa was married.
But Juliana, toiling from morning till night for her eighty pounds a
year; Juliana, painful and persistent, growing into middle-age without a
hope, Juliana was an incarnate reproach, a perpetual monument to the
folly of Tollington Moon. Juliana disturbed her dream.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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