Her heart surged
hot against Wanless; she could not, if she would, forget it--least of all
in the Fulham Road.
She felt spotted in Mrs. Benson's spotless dwelling--largely because it
was Mrs. Benson's, partly because a smell of fried herrings drifted in
daily from the street. She felt herself the chosen of a servant, one for
whom a clown had held battle; and then she found herself resenting the
phrases, growing hot over them. A servant--Mrs. Benson, that staunch
protectress! A clown--Struan--his thin frame throbbing with fire, and his
eyes of a hawk in a cage, farset, communing with invisible things! Why,
when he was rapt in his work he never saw her at all. She was a speck at
his feet! He had sent her away once. "I'm busy," he had said, without
looking at her; and she had gone away on tiptoe. These things vexed her to
remember, and she felt that Mrs. Benson's dwelling could not be hers.
Mrs. Benson, too, it must be owned, had an incumbrance, which she kept as
far as might be in the lower regions of her house, but which was now and
again encountered on the stair--a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt
--sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ne'er-
do-well, whom it was his mother's cross and crown to keep in complete
idleness.
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