Read The Girls of Slender Means for Free Online

Nicholas, while he continued to glance here and there at the several groups of chattering girls in other parts of the room. The terrace doors stood wide open to the cool night and presently from the recreation room there came, by way of the terrace, the sound of Joanna in the process of an elocution lesson.
     
        _I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,__
        _The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride;__
        _Of Him who walked in glory and in joy__
        _Following his plough, along the mountain-side;__
        _By our own spirits are we deified:__
        _We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;__
        _But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.__
     
        "I wish she would stick to _The Wreck of the Deutschland__," Judy Redwood said. "She's marvellous with Hopkins."
        Joanna's voice was saying, "Remember the stress on Chatterton and the slight pause to follow."
        Joanna's pupil recited:
     
        _I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,__
     
        The excitement over the slit window went on for the rest of the afternoon. Jane's brain-work proceeded against the background echoes of voices from the large wash-room where the lavatories were. The two other occupants of the top floor had returned, having been to their homes in the country for the week-end: Dorothy Markham, the impoverished niece of Lady Julia Markham who was chairwoman of the club's management committee, and Nancy Riddle, one of the club's many clergymen's daughters. Nancy was trying to overcome her Midlands accent, and took lessons in elocution from Joanna with this end in view.
        Jane, at her brain-work, heard from the direction of the wash-room the success of Dorothy Markham's climb through the window. Dorothy's hips were thirty-six and a half inches; her bust measurement was only thirty-one, a fact which did not dismay her, as she intended to marry one of three young men out of her extensive acquaintance who happened to find themselves drawn to boyish figures, and although she did not know about such things as precisely as did her aunt, Dorothy knew well enough that her hipless and breastless shape would always attract the sort of young man who felt at home with it. Dorothy could emit, at any hour of the day or night, a waterfall of debutante chatter, which rightly gave the impression that on any occasion between talking, eating and sleeping, she did not think, except in terms of these phrase-ripples of hers: "Filthy lunch." "Thee most gorgeous wedding." "He actually raped her, she was amazed." "Ghastly film." "I'm desperately well, thanks, how are you?"
        Her voice from the wash-room distracted Jane: "Oh hell, I'm black with soot, I'm absolutely filthington." She opened Jane's door without knocking and put in her head. "Got any soapyjo?" It was some months before she was to put her head round Jane's door and announce, "Filthy luck. I'm preggers. Come to the wedding."
        Jane said, on being asked for the use of her soap, "Can you lend me fifteen shillings till next Friday?" It was her final resort for getting rid of people when she was doing brain-work.
        Evidently, from the sound of things, Nancy Riddle was stuck in the window. Nancy was getting hysterical. Finally, Nancy was released and calmed, as was betokened by the gradual replacement of Midlands vowels with standard English ones issuing from the wash-room.
        Jane continued with her work, describing her effort to herself as pressing on regardless. All the club, infected by the Air Force idiom current amongst the dormitory virgins, used this phrase continually.
        She had put aside Nicholas's manuscript for the time being, as it was a sticky proposition; she had not yet, in fact, grasped the theme of the book, as was necessary before deciding on a significant passage to cast doubt upon, although she had already thought of the comment she would recommend George to make: "Don't you think this