“Our delicate flower,” said Len.
“Now don’t you two scrap,” said Mrs.
Hubbard. “Good temper, that’s what I like, and a bit of give and take.” The big young man grinned down at her affectionately.
“I don’t mind our Nigel, Ma,” he said.
A girl coming down the stairs at that moment said: “Oh, Mrs. Hubbard, Mrs. Nicoletis is in her room and said she would like to see you as soon as you got back.” Mrs. Hubbard sighed and started up the stairs.
The tall dark girl who had given the message stood against the wall to let her pass.
Len Bateson, divesting himself of his mackintosh, said, “What’s up, Valerie? Complaints of our behavior to be passed on by Mother Hubbard in due course?” The girl shrugged her thin elegant shoulders.
She came down the stairs and across the hall.
“This place gets more like a madhouse every day,” she said over her shoulder.
She went through the door at the right as she spoke.
She moved with that insolent effortless grace that is common to those who have been professional mannequins.
26 Hickory Road was in reality two houses, 24 and 26 semidetached. They had been thrown into one on the ground floor, so that there was both a communal sitting room and a large dining room on the ground floor, as well as two cloakrooms and a small office towards the back of the house. Two separate staircases led to the floors above which remained detached. The girls occupied bedrooms in the right hand side of the house, and the men on the other, the original No. 24.
Mrs. Hubbard went upstairs loosening the collar of her coat. She sighed as she turned in the direction of Mrs. Nicoletis’s room.
“In one of her states again, I suppose,” she muttered.
She tapped on the door and entered.
Mrs. Nicoletis’s sitting room was kept very hot. The big electric fire had all its bars turned on and the window was tightly shut. Mrs.
Nicoletis was sitting smoking on a sofa surrounded by a lot of rather dirty silk and velvet sofa cushions. She was a big dark woman still good looking, with a bad tempered mouth and enormous brown eyes.
“Ah! So there you are,” Mrs. Nicoletis made it sound like an accusation.
Mrs. Hubbard, true to her Lemon blood, was unperturbed.
“Yes,” she said tartly, “I’m here. I was told you wanted to see me specially.” “Yes, indeed I do. It is monstrous, no less, monstrous!” “What’s monstrous?” “These bills! Your accounts!” Mrs.
Nicoletis produced a sheaf of papers from beneath a cushion in the manner of a successful conjurer.
“What are we feeding these miserable students on?
Foie gras and quails? Is this the Ritz? Who do they think they are, these students?” “Young people with a healthy appetite,” said Mrs.
Hubbard. “They get a good breakfast and a decent evening meal-plain food but nourishing. It all works out very economically.” “Economically? Economically? You dare to say comt to me? When I am being ruined?” “You make a very substantial profit, Mrs.
Nicoletis, out of this place. For students, the rates are on the high side.” “But am I not always full? Do I ever have a vacancy that is not applied for three times over?
Am I not sent students by the British Council, by London University Lodging Board-by the Embassies-by the French Lyc6e?
Are not there always three applications for every vacancy?” “That’s very largely because the meals here are appetizing and sufficient. Young people must be properly fed.” “Bah! These totals are scandalous. It is that Italian cook and her husband. They swindle you over the food.” “Oh no, they don’t, Mrs. Nicoletis.
I can assure you that no foreigner is going to put anything over on me.” “Then it is you yourself-you who are robbing me.” Mrs. Hubbard remained unperturbed.
“I can’t allow you to say things like that,” she said in the voice an old fashioned Nanny might have used to a particularly truculent charge. “It isn’t a — nice thing to do, and one of these days it will land you in trouble.” “A hid!” Mrs. Nicoletis threw the sheaf of bills dramatically up in the air whence they fluttered to the ground in aBut directions. Mrs.