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Miss Nippett led the way to the landing immediately outside her door, where she unlocked a roomy cupboard, crammed to its utmost capacity with odds and ends of cheap feminine adornment. Mangy evening boas, flimsy wraps, down-at-heel dancing shoes, handkerchiefs, gloves, powder puffs, and odd bits of ribbon were jumbled together in heaped disorder. "D'ye know what they is?" asked Miss Nippett.
"I've never 'ad time to get married, there's so much to do at 'Poulter's. You know! Still, there's no knowing." Mavis, distressed as she was, could hardly restrain a smile. "I've news too," went on Miss Nippett. "Have you?" asked Mavis, who was burning to get to the reason of her call. "Ain't you heard of it?" "I can't say I have."
Miss Nippett shook her head as resolutely as her bodily weakness permitted. "What's the time?" she asked presently. Mavis told her. "Whatever 'appens, I shall go down to posterity as a partner in 'Poulter's'!" "You've no business to think of such things," faltered Mavis. "It's no use codding me. I know; reely I do." "Then, if you don't believe me, wouldn't you like to see a clergyman?"
Mavis wiped them gently away and softly kissed the puckered brow. "There's somethin' I'd like to tell you," said Miss Nippett, some minutes later. "Try and get some sleep," urged Mavis. "But I want to tell someone. It isn't as if you was a larruping girl who'd laugh, but you're a wife, an' ever so big at that, with what you're expectin' next week." "What is it?" asked Mavis.
She looked many years older; her figure was quite bent; the familiar shawl was too ample for the narrow, stooping shoulders. "Aren't you well?" asked Mavis, as she kissed her friend's cheek. "Quite. Reely I am but for a slight cold. Mr Poulter, 'e's well too. Fancy you married!" "Yes," said Mavis sadly. But Miss Nippett took no notice of her dejection.
Presently, when Mavis stooped to kiss the wan face before going, Miss Nippett said: "If I was to die, d'ye know what 'ud make me die 'appy?" "Don't talk such nonsense: at your age, too." "If I could just be made a partner in 'Poulter's," continued Miss Nippett. "Not for the money, you understand, reely not for that; but for the honour, as you might say." "I quite understand."
If the rivalry between "Poulter's" and "Gellybrand's" could have been decided by an appeal to force, Miss Nippett would have been found in the van of "Poulter's" adherents, firmly imbued with the righteousness of her cause.
Such was her distress at this remissness on the part of the dancing master, that more often than not, when Miss Nippett, after waking from sleep, asked with evident concern if Mr Poulter had been, Mavis would reply: "Yes. But he didn't like to come upstairs and disturb you." For five or six occasions Miss Nippett accepted this explanation, but, at last, she became skeptical of Mavis' statements.
"Of course, the statement carried its own refutation, as no gentleman could ever demean himself so much as to kiss another gentleman's wife." "That's what I say," cried Miss Nippett. "But Gellybrand foully libelled me," cried Mr Poulter, with another outburst of anger, "when he stated that I only paid one and fourpence a pound for my tea."
Upon Mavis's third visit to Miss Nippett after her interview with Mr Poulter, she noticed a change in the sick woman's appearance; she was sitting up in bed with a face wreathed in smiles. "'Ave you 'eard?" she cried excitedly, when she saw Mavis. "Heard what?" asked Mavis innocently. "'Bout me an' 'Poulter's. You don't mean to say you 'aven't 'eard!" "I hope it's good news." "Good! Good!
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