This FreedomHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
This Freedom
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
The boarding house, which Rosalie, with qualms as to its reception by
Aunt Belle, had for some time been secretly meditating, came easily
after that. The boarding house had moreover for Aunt Belle a double
attraction. It not only removed Rosalie in her capacity of one
threatening to turn Aunt Belle’s nice house into a hotel; it also
restored Rosalie in her capacity of overwhelmed, grateful and admiring
poor relation. Rosalie was now invited from the boarding house just as
previously she had been invited from the Sultana’s; the table and
the appointments of Aunt Belle’s house were now lavishly displayed in
contrast to the display and the table endured by Rosalie at the boarding
house; Aunt Belle was again supremely happy in Rosalie and abundantly
kind; dinner each Saturday night was a standing invitation and
frequently for these dinners Aunt Belle arranged “a little dinner party
for you, dear child, just one or two really nice people that it is nice
for you to meet and that you can tell your friends at the boarding house
about, dear child.”
Aunt Belle helped Rosalie to choose the boarding house and saw that it
was “nice.” Nice people went there and the proprietress, Miss Kentish,
was nice. Miss Kentish had a grey, detachable fringe which became, and
re-mained, semi-detached immediately after breakfast, and a mobile front
tooth which came out surprisingly far when she talked and went in with
a sharp click when she stopped. She had for newcomers a single
conversational sentence--“My name is Kentish, though funnily enough we
come from Sussex”--and, for all purposes, a single business principle,
that of willingness “to come to an arrangement.” “I am afraid I cannot
remedy your water not being hot at eight o’clock,” she would say to a
boarder, “but I will gladly come to an arrangement with you. Ten minutes
to eight or ten minutes past eight” (click). She would come to an
arrangement on anything. She became very fond of Rosalie in course of
time and once told her that though her duties never permitted her to
attend church she had “come to an arrangement” with the vicar and felt
that she had “come to an arrangement with Our Lord” (click). She came to
an arrangement with Rosalie in the matter of tariff, receiving her and a
Miss Salmon, who also sought arrangement, as “two friends as one.” This
was two persons sharing a room at the tariff of a person and a half.
Living was very cheap in those days. Rosalie, at the beginning, with
Miss Salmon, paid 18/6 a week, and out of the twenty-five shillings paid
her, at first, every Friday by Mr. Simcox there remained what seemed to
Rosalie great wealth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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