Her last morning at Bosnia Road turned out to be warm and sunny. She was ready to smile at contrasts, and to draw them with a positive and perverse wilfulness. Breakfast was just like other breakfasts, only different. The brown teapot with the chip out of its lid stood there, familiar yet ironical. The marmalade dish, with its pinky roses and silver-plated handle that was wearing green, reminded her that it would meet her eyes no more. The patchwork tea-cosy was like a fat and sentimental old lady who was always exclaiming, “Oh, dear, what a wicked world it is!” Even the egg-cup, with its smudgy blue pattern, had a ridiculous individuality of its own. Eve felt a little emotional and more than a little morbid, and ready to laugh at herself because a teapot and an egg-cup made her moralise. She had packed all her belongings, paid Mrs. Buss, and ordered a “growler” to call at half-past ten. The cabman was punctual. He came into the narrow hall, rubbing his boots on the doormat, a cheerful ancient, a bolster of clothes, and looking to be in perpetual proximity to breathlessness and perspiration. He laid his old top-hat on the floor beside the staircase, and went up to struggle with Eve’s boxes. Mrs. Buss had let Eve’s rooms, and had nothing to complain of. For the time being her attention was concentrated on seeing that the cabman did not knock the paint off the banisters. “Do be careful now!” A red-faced man was descending under the shadow of a big black trunk. “All right, mum. Don’t you worry, mum!” He breathed hard and diffused a scent of the stable. “Them chaps as builds ’ouses don’t think of the luggidge and foornitoore. ’Old up, there!” A corner of the trunk jarred against the wall and left a gash in the paper. Mrs. Buss made a clucking sound with her tongue. “There, didn’t I say!” “Did I touch anythink?” “Now, mind the hat-stand! And the front door was painted three months ago.” “Don’t you worry, mum. It ain’t the first time luggidge and me ’as gone out walkin’ together!” Mrs. Buss turned to Eve who was standing in the sitting-room doorway. “That’s just the British working-man to a T. He earns his living by doing one thing all his life, and he does it badly. My poor husband found that out before he died. I do hope I’ve made you feel comfortable and homely? I always try to do my best.” “I’m sure you do.” She was glad when the loading up business was over, and she was driving away between the dull little houses. Eve had written to book a room at a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury, an hotel that had been brought into being by the knocking together of three straight-faced, dark-bricked old houses. She drove first to the hotel, left a light trunk and a handbag there, and then ordered the cabman to go on to Charing Cross where she left the rest of her luggage in the keeping of the railway company.