BACKWATER BACKWATER BY DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON AUTHOR OF “POINTED ROOFS” LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN First published 1916 All rights reserved TO J. A. H. BACKWATER CHAPTER I 1 A swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam from a tapestry screen standing between her and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the bow of the window. Consulting it at intervals as the afternoon wore on, she found that it made very light of the quiet propositions that were being elaborated within hearing of her inattentive ears. Looking beyond it she could catch glimpses between the crowded fernery, when a tram was not jingling by, of a close-set palisade just across the roadway and beyond the palisade of a green level ending at a row of Spanish poplars. The trams seemed very near and noisy. When they passed by the window, the speakers had to raise their voices. Otherwise the little drawing-room was very quiet, with a strange old-fashioned quietness. It was full of old things, like the Gobelin screen, and old thoughts like the thoughts of the ladies who were sitting and talking there. She and her mother had seemed quite modern, fussy, worldly people when they had first come into the room. From the moment the three ladies had come in and begun talking to her mother, the things in the room, and the view of the distant row of poplars had grown more and more peaceful, and now at the end of an hour she felt that she, and to some extent Mrs. Henderson too, belonged to the old-world room with its quiet green outlook shut in by the poplars. Only the trams were disturbing. They came busily by, with their strange jingle-jingle, plock-plock, and made her inattentive. Why were there so many people coming by in trams? Where were they going? Why were all the trams painted that hard, dingy blue? The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs in smooth gentle voices, in small broken phrases, frequently interrupting and correcting each other. Miriam heard dreamily that they wanted help with the lower school, the children from six to eight years of age, in the mornings and afternoons, and in the evenings a general superintendence of the four boarders. They kept on saying that the work was very easy and simple; there were no naughty girls--hardly a single naughty girl--in the school; there should be no difficult superintendence, no exercise of authority would be required.