Free Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters Page B

I spent my evenings in calling and he shuddered; and I could only nod against his neck on friends and family, and bidding them farewell; and in and say, 'I will, I will; I promise you, I will.'
    washing and patching and packing my dresses, and sorting But oh! hard-hearted daughter that I was, when he had left out which little items to take with me, which to leave me my tears dried at once, and I felt the return of all my behind. I visited the Palace only once, and that was in the gladness of the night before. I hugged myself in pleasure, company of my parents, who came to reassure themselves and danced a jig around the parlour - but delicately, on that Miss Butler was still sensible and good, and to ask for tiptoe, so that they wouldn't hear me in the dining-room further particulars of the shadowy Walter Bliss.
    below. Then quickly, before I should be missed, I ran to the I had Kitty to myself for no more than a minute, while post office and sent Kitty a card at the Palace - a picture of Father chatted with Tony and Tricky, after the show. I had a Whitstable oyster-smack, upon whose sail I inked 'To feared all week that I had imagined the words that she had London', and on the deck of which I drew two girls with spoken to me on Sunday evening, or misunderstood them bags and trunks and outsize, smiling faces. 'I can come!!!' I entirely. Every night, almost, I had woken sweating from wrote upon the back, and added that she must do without dreams in which I presented myself at her door, with my bags all packed and my hat upon my head, and she looked 65

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    at me in wonder, and frowned, or laughed with derision; or disappointing one. I put my hand to my brow and gazed at else I arrived too late at the station, and had to chase the the glittering bay, at the distant fields and hedges of train along the track while Kitty and Mr Bliss gazed at me Sheppey, at the low, pitch-painted houses of the town, and from their carriage window, and would not lean outside to the masts and cranes of the harbour and the shipyard. It was pull me in ... That night at the Palace, however, she led me all as familiar to me as the lines on my own face, and - like to one side, and pressed my hand, and was quite as kind and one's face when viewed in a glass - both fascinating and excited as she had been before.
    rather dull. No matter how hard I studied it, how fiercely I
    'I've had a letter from Mr Bliss,' she said. 'He has found us thought, I shall not gaze at you again for months and rooms in a house in a place called Brixton — a place so months, it looked just as it always did; and at last I turned full, he says, of music-hall people and actors that they call it my eyes away, and walked sadly home.
    "Grease-Paint Avenue".'
    But it was the same there: nothing that I gazed at or touched Grease-Paint Avenue! I saw it instantly and it was was as special as I thought it should be, or changed by my marvellous, a street set out like a make-up box, with going in any way. Nothing, that is, except the faces of my narrow, gilded houses, each one with a different coloured family; and these were so grave, or so falsely merry and roof; and ours would be number 3 - with a chimney the stiff, that I could hardly bear to look at them at all.
    colour of Kitty's carmined lips!
    So I was almost glad, at last, when it was time to say
    'We are to catch the two o'clock train on Sunday,' she went farewell. Father wouldn't let me take the little train to on, 'and Mr Bliss himself will meet us at the station, in a Canterbury, but said I must be driven, and hired a gig from carriage. And I'm due to start the very next day at the Star the ostler at the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, to take me Music Hall, in Bermondsey.'
    there himself. I kissed Mother, and Alice, and let my The Star,' I said. That's a lucky name.'
    brother hand me to my seat at Father's side and place my She smiled. 'Let's hope so. Oh, Nan, let's only hope so!'
    luggage at my feet. There was little enough of it: