Her light busy footfall was audible upstairs as Miriam faced the boxes and parcels waiting, piled amongst the furniture of the little back room, to be unpacked.... With Sunday at hand it would never occur to Miss Holland to leave it all and go out. But she too must be wanting tea. There could be tea, now, amongst the wreckage. Laughter and relaxation. Yet not to go out now was to miss so much. To go out, leaving behind this treasure of disorder, and sit at leisure in an undisturbed world, would be to reap the full adventure of being installed. Homekeeping people missed that adventure. They slaved on and on, saying how nice it will be when everything is _straight_. And then wondered why it was not nice. Left to herself, she would now go out, not only for tea but for the whole evening, into a world renewed. There would be one of those incidents that punctually present themselves at such moments, a link in the chain of life as it appears only when one is cut off from fixed circumstances. She would come home lost and refreshed. Laze through Sunday morning. Roam about the rooms amongst things askew as though thrown up by an earthquake, their exposed strata storied with memory and promise. There would be indelible hours of reading and dreaming, of harvesting the lively thought that comes when one is neither here nor there, but poised in bright light between a life ended and a life not yet begun. The blissful state would last until dusk deepened towards evening and would leave her filled with a fresh realisation of the wonder of being alive and in the midst of life, and with strength to welcome the week slowly turning its unknown bright face towards her through the London night. With great speed, at the eleventh hour, she would get everything roughly in order. Miss Holland appeared at the sitting-room door, eyeing the disorder. Miriam groaned her fatigue aloud. “Let’s leave it,” said Miss Holland, contemptuously. “Oh, let’s _leave_ it,” she wailed in a protesting falsetto, with averted face and outstretched fingers disgustedly flipping. “Let’s drop everything and go out for tea,” she went on, relaxing, looking into space, while with eyebrows raised disdainfully she stood halted for response. “Oh, agreed,” said Miriam. “I’m expiring.” “We will _not_ expire. We will seek tea _immediately_.” She swung round on one heel and bounded lightly back into the bedroom with her tinkling laugh. The little scene remained in Miriam’s eyes, somewhere within it the exchanged glance of delighted understanding that had driven them both to cover which was not cover, for they were immediately together again, and the dividing curtain could not mask the results of their encounter, the quick movements, the duet of cheerful hummings. 6 Miriam went back into the little room to collect her outdoor things; checking an impulse to eager snatching, steadying herself against the sudden arrival of the personal note.