As she bent over the coat which she was mending for Dick, she was
thinking of one place over which that same air was at that moment
wafting the scent of the sea and the flowers--Shorne Mills; and, as she
raised her eyes and glanced at the triangular patch of sky which was
framed by the roofs of the opposite houses, she could see the picture
she loved quite distinctly, and almost hear--notwithstanding the
intermezzo banged out by the piano organ in the street below--the songs
and whistling of the fishermen, and the flap of the sails against the
masts. Let the noise in and outside the Buildings be as great as it
might, she could always lose herself in memories of Shorne Mills; and if
sorrow's crown of sorrow be the remembering of happier days, such
remembrance is not without its consolation.
When Dick and she had come to the Buildings, two months ago, Nell felt
as if she should never get used to the crowded place and its
multitudinous discomforts; but time had rendered life, even amid such
surroundings, tolerable; and there were moments in which some phase of
the human comedy always being played around her brought the smile to her
pale face.
Presently she glanced at the tiny clock on the mantelshelf, and, laying
the coat aside, put the kettle on the fire, and got ready for tea; for
Dick would soon be home from the great engineering works on the other
side of the water, and he liked his tea "to meet him on the stairs."
As she was cutting the bread for the toast there came a knock at the
door, and in answer to her "Come in!" the door was opened halfway, and a
head appeared around it.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Lorton. Lorton not in? I thought I heard his
step," said a man's voice, but one almost as soft as a woman's.
Nell scarcely looked up from her task; the tenants of Beaumont Buildings
are sociable, and their visits to one another were not limited to the
fashionable hours. For instance, the borrowing and returning of a
saucepan or a sewing machine, or some lump sugar, went on all day, and
sometimes late into the night; and the borrower or lender often granted
or accepted a loan without stopping the occupation which he or she
happened to be engaged in at the entrance of the other party.
"Not yet. It is scarcely his time, Mr. Falconer. Is it anything I can
do?"
The young man came in slowly and with a certain timidity, and stood by
the mantelshelf, looking down at her as she knelt and toasted the bread.
He was very thin--painfully so--and very pale. There were shadows round
his large, dark eyes--the eyes of a man who dreams--and his black hair,
worn rather long, swept away from a forehead as white as a woman's, but
with two deep lines between the eyes which told the story of pain
suffered patiently and in silence.