The old actress had an admirable shrug. "Oh I'll knock her about--she seems stout enough!"
When they had descended to the street Miriam mentioned to Peter that she was thirsty, dying to drink something: upon which he asked her if she should have an objection to going with him to a café.
"Objection? I've spent my life in cafés! They're warm in winter and you get your lamplight for nothing," she explained. "Mamma and I have sat in them for hours, many a time, with a _consommation_ of three sous, to save fire and candles at home. We've lived in places we couldn't sit in, if you want to know--where there was only really room if we were in bed. Mamma's money's sent out from England and sometimes it usedn't to come. Once it didn't come for months--for months and months. I don't know how we lived. There wasn't any to come; there wasn't any to get home. That isn't amusing when you're away in a foreign town without any friends. Mamma used to borrow, but people wouldn't always lend. You needn't be afraid--she won't borrow of _you_. We're rather better now--something has been done in England; I don't understand what. It's only fivepence a year, but it has been settled; it comes regularly; it used to come only when we had written and begged and waited. But it made no difference--mamma was always up to her ears in books. They served her for food and drink. When she had nothing to eat she began a novel in ten volumes--the old-fashioned ones; they lasted longest. She knows every _cabinet de lecture_ in every town; the little, cheap, shabby ones, I mean, in the back streets, where they have odd volumes and only ask a sou and the books are so old that they smell like close rooms. She takes them to the cafés--the little, cheap, shabby cafés too--and she reads there all the evening. That's very well for her, but it doesn't feed me. I don't like a diet of dirty old novels. I sit there beside her with nothing to do, not even a stocking to mend; she doesn't think that _comme il faut_. I don't know what the people take me for. However, we've never been spoken to: any one can see mamma's a great lady. As for me I daresay I might be anything dreadful. If you're going to be an actress you must get used to being looked at. There were people in England who used to ask us to stay; some of them were our cousins--or mamma says they were. I've never been very clear about our cousins and I don't think they were at all clear about us. Some of them are dead; the others don't ask us any more. You should hear mamma on the subject of our visits in England. It's very convenient when your cousins are dead--that explains everything. Mamma has delightful phrases: 'My family is almost extinct.' Then your family may have been anything you like. Ours of course was magnificent. We did stay in a place once where there was a deer-park, and also private theatricals. I played in them; I was only fifteen years old, but I was very big and I thought I was in heaven. I'll go anywhere you like; you needn't be afraid; we've been in places! I've learned a great deal that way--sitting beside mamma and watching people, their faces, their types, their movements. There's a great deal goes on in cafés: people come to them to talk things over, their private affairs, their complications; they have important meetings. Oh I've observed scenes between men and women--very quiet, terribly quiet, but awful, pathetic, tragic! Once I saw a woman do something that I'm going to do some day when I'm great--if I can get the situation. I'll tell you what it is sometime--I'll do it for you. Oh it is the book of life!"