While the quiet girl had been at Mrs Maple’s boarding house, she had had a friend to share her evenings with. The difficulty of Alice’s position, her listlessness and obvious distress at Daniel Rokeby’s continued absence from London, none of this had prevented her from being a pleasant companion. She didn’t have Rachel’s energy and intelligence but Alice was closer to Ursula in age and, despite the difficulties of her situation, could manage to see the humour in some of her tales of life working for Mrs Bruton. There was the afternoon her employer had held one of her ‘At Homes’, with Ursula helping to serve the teas, and had announced in wondering tones how taken aback she had been by a performance of Hamlet she had attended the previous evening with friends. ‘I expected something out of the ordinary but to me it seemed as though the author had merely cobbled together a whole stream of quotations.’ There had been a moment’s stunned silence, then an elderly gentleman seated in a wing chair had stamped his cane approvingly upon the floor.
