Twopence Coloured by Patrick Hamilton Page A

meet hers with some seriousness.
    “’Tor or ’Tress?” he asked.
    “’Tress‚” she said, and laughed.
    “Do you want to become one, then?”
    “Yes.” Jackie laughed again.
    “I’m very sorry to hear that, Miss Mortimer.”
    Now Jackie had been prepared for some sort of rebuff like this. She had sufficient shrewdness to recognize and allow for the mystery-mongering and priest-hood of a professional, and although she had hoped for better things from this young man, she was not surprised. Nevertheless, she liked him less.
    “Why?” she said softly.
    “Well, I don’t think you’d be at all happy.”
    “Oh — but I’m prepared for that. I know the hardships.”
    There was a silence.
    “How do you know them?” he asked.
    “Oh,” said Jackie, “I know them.”
    “But how?”
    “I can imagine them, then,” protested Jackie, quietly.
    At this point he offered her a cigarette, which she took, and he lit a match. His hand was firm as he held it out for her, but her lips were not.
    “And the hardships are a sort of added attraction?” he suggested.
    Now this was the truth. But Jackie would not let him see that. “Of course not,” she said. These soft, slightly constrained , cigarette-lighting moments, Jackie did not find unpleasant, and she was confident of getting all she wanted from him before she was through. But he apparently was aware of the dangers of intercourse of this kind, and he changed its tone.
    “I say,” he said abruptly. “Where on earth are you going to-day?”
    “I’m going to West Kensington. I’m going to stay with an old nurse there.”
    “An Old Nurse?”
    “Yes. An Old Nurse.”
    “A Holiday with an Old Nurse?”
    “Well — sort of. I might go on to stay with friends later. But I’m wanting to set up on my own, if I can. You see, I’m by myself. My father’s died, you see, and I’ve got to do something.”
    “Do you mean you’ve got to earn your living?”
    “Well — yes. You see, that’s why I want to do — what I told you about.”
    “Oh. I see.”
    “I say,” said Jackie, who after a fairly serious “I see” like that thought she had better play her best card and win hands down. “Will you help me?”
    “With all the pleasure in the world,” he said, with great sincerity, but she detected something mocking in this glib assurance.
    “I mean over That?”
    “But that would n’t be helping you.”
    “Oh yes, it would,” said Jackie, softly leading back to the quietudes of discourse.
    “Why don’t you learn to type or something? Secretary and that sort of thing. You‘d do just as well, and work less, probably.”
    “I can type, as a matter of fact. I’Ve only just learnt. But that’s nothing in itself. And I’m not going to spend all my time in a stuffy office.”
    “How do you know it’d be stuffy? They might be freshair fiends.”
    “Oh — it would ‚”said Jackie.
    “It’s not proved, anyway. But if you could do it at home, would you?”
    “Yes. I rather love typing, as a matter of fact. But who’s going to give me typing to do?”
    “I’ll give you some, if you like. I’ve got a book.”
    “Really? What sort? …”
    “A Book by Me.”
    “Really?” Jackie was shocked out of her own preoccupations by this. “Do you write, then?”
    “Yes.”
    “I mean, do you — publish them?” Jackie blushed.
    “Yes.”
    “How frightfully interesting. What sort of books are they?” Jackie was still blushing.
    “Sort of books on Sociology.”
    “Really?”
    “The kind of things in which the Italics are always being Mine,” he said. Jackie laughed.
    “And Sincerest Thanks are due to Tireless Energies of people, in forewords,” he said. There was a silence.
    “What’s your name, then?”
    “Gissing.”
    “Gissing? No relation to ——”
    “Yes.”
    “The?”
    “No.”
    “What’s your first name?”
    “Richard,” he said firmly, and looked at his watch. “I say, I ought to be going soon.”
    “Oh — must