When the others had gone, she and George would turn
the lights out on the wreckage of the dining-room, and stagger silently
to bed.
Fatigue would follow Emeline well into the next day after one of these
card parties. If George was going out of town, she would send Julia off
to play with other children in the house, and lie in bed until noon,
getting up now and then to hold a conversation with some tradesman
through a crack in the door. At one she might sally forth in her
favourite combination of wrapper and coat to buy cream and rolls, and
Julia would be regaled on sausages, hot cakes, bakery cookies, and
coffee, or come in to find no lunch at all, and that her mother had gone
out for the afternoon.
Emeline had grown more and more infatuated with the theatre and all that
pertained to it. She went to matinees twice a week, and she and her
group of intimate friends also "went Dutch" to evening performances
whenever it was possible. Their conversation was spattered with
theatrical terms, and when, as occasionally happened, a real actress or
even a chorus girl from the Tivoli joined their group, Emeline could
hardly contain her eagerness and her admiration.
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