The name of the people in the house was Coulson: he made arrangements with the woman at once to come and live there: she was a tall, weathered-looking woman of middle age, they talked together in the hall. The hall was made of marble flags and went directly out on to a gravelled walk.
The woman was crisp, cheerful, and worldly-looking. She was still quite handsome. She wore a well-cut skirt of woollen plaid and a silk blouse: when she talked she kept her arms folded because the air in the hall was chilly, and she held a cigarette in the fingers of one hand. A shaggy brown dog came out and nosed upward toward her hand as she was talking and she put her hand upon its head and scratched it gently. When Eugene told her he wanted to move in the next day, she said briskly and cheerfully:
“Right you are! You’ll find everything ready when you get here!” Then she asked if he was at the university. He said no, and added, with a feeling of difficulty and naked desolation, that he was a “writer,” and was coming there to work. He was twenty-four years old.
“Then I am sure that what you do will be very, very good!” she said cheerfully and decisively. “We have had several Americans in the house before and all of them were very clever! All the Americans we have had here were very clever people,” said the woman. “I’m sure that you will like it.” Then she walked to the door with him to say good-bye. As they stood there, there was the sound of a small motorcar coming to a halt and in a moment a girl came swiftly across the gravel space outside and entered the hall. She was tall, slender, very lovely, but she had the same bright hard look in her eye that the woman had, the same faint, hard smile round the edges of her mouth.
“Edith,” the woman said in her crisp curiously incisive tone, “this young man is an American—he is coming here tomorrow.” The girl looked at Eugene for a moment with her hard bright glance, thrust out a small gloved hand, and shook hands briefly, a swift firm greeting.
“Oh! How d’ye do?” she said. “I hope you will like it here.” Then she went on down the hall, entered a room on the left, and closed the door behind her.
Her voice had been crisp and certain like her mother’s, but it was also cool, young, and sweet, with music in it, and later as Eugene went down the road, he could still hear it.
That was a wonderful house, and the people there were wonderful people.
