Exit the Skeleton

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

AMABEL LEIGH woke as her daily helper, elderly and stout, entered the
room with the tray.

"Mornin', dearie. Ten o'clock to the tick and here's yer brekfus'. A nice
kipper, seein' as it's Wednesday. Three letters for yer; two of 'em bills
by the look of it. Hope the other makes up. No news in the papers. Strike
in Belfast, sudden death of a Cab'net Minister, airyplane crash in
America, but no news what is news. I'll get yer bath in 'arf a hour."

"You are very good to me, Croonie."

"Good to them as is good to me. That's my motter; always has been."

Croonie put the tray on a bedside table, straightened the coverlet and
pulled back the curtains. She seemed reluctant to go. She generally
enjoyed a little chat, and this morning there was a special reason for
one. Everybody called her Croonie. It was, not a nickname as many
supposed, nor had it any reference, ironic or otherwise, to her evident
lack of a singing voice. It was simpler than that. She had married a man
named Croonie, who had left her when she ceased to support him in the
manner to which he felt himself entitled.

"So Miss Valerie got back all right," she said.

"You have seen her?"

"Threw her arms round me the minute I got here, she did, and kissed me.
'Good to be home, Croonie,' she said. My word, she has shot up, taller 'n
you now and nearly as pretty as you was at her age."

"Prettier, I hope."

"She'll never be that, if she lives to a nundred. 'Tell Mummie I'll be
back soon,' she says, and out she pops. A young man, I 'spose, but her
only home yesterday and early in the mornin'. She said somethin' about
bathin' the Serpentine. There's the dratted bell. Bath ready in a' nour,
dearie."

She bustled from the room. Amabel knew she was lucky to have such a
faithful servitor and friend. Croonie had been a dresser at the theatre
when they first met. Now her mornings were spent at the flat, where she
let herself in at eight o'clock on the tick, as she put it. She sometimes
"obliged" other ladies in the afternoon, or for an occasional party, but
her one job supplied her needs and she did not believe in work for work's
sake.

Amabel drank her tea and attacked her kipper. She did not immediately
open her letters; there was plenty to occupy her thoughts. Few would have
supposed that her pleasant bedroom had for many years been the connubial
nest of an intemperate cabman and his tempestuous spouse. Yet such was
the case. An enterprising speculator, with some skill as an architect,
had purchased a mews that was falling into decay and had transformed it
into a select colony of small flats. Outside, pebble-dash had disguised
the old brickwork; and inside, modern fitments and pretty lattice windows
had transformed stalls and coach-houses with the rooms over them into
suites, each with two bedrooms, a lounge, a tiny kitchenette and a
bathroom. The name, Russell's Mews, had burgeoned into Dowton Close and,
the position being near to South Kensington station, many fortunate
persons with some fashionable or aristocratic aspirations had secured
homes in a convenient locality at a moderate rent. Amabel's was on the
first floor.