Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett — Read

Elsie was forgetting to fasten the shop door. With a little start at her own negligence she secured both the bolt and the lock. She thought suddenly of the days -- only a year away, yet far, far off in the deceiving distances of time -- when Mr. Earlforward and she had the place to themselves. Mrs. Earlforward had come, and Mrs. Earlforward had gone, and now Elsie had sole charge -- had far more responsibility and more power than ever before. The strangeness of quite simple events awed her. Nor did the chill of the thin brass handle of the milk-can in her hand protect her against the mysterious spell of the enigma of life.

She "knew" that the shop would never open again as T. T. Riceyman's. She "knew" that either Mr. or Mrs. Earlforward would die, and perhaps both; and she was very sad because she felt sorry for them, not because she felt sorry for herself. In the days previous to the amazing advent of Mrs. Earlforward Elsie had had Joe. Joe was definitely vanished from her existence. Nothing else in her own existence greatly mattered to her. She would probably lose a good situation; but she was well aware, beneath her diffidence and modesty, that by virtue of the knowledge which she had acquired from Mrs. Earlforward she could very easily get a fresh situation, and from the material point of view a better one. Professionally she had one secret ambition, to be able to say to a prospective employer that she could "wait at table. " There would be something grand about that, but she saw no chance of learning such an intricate and rare business. She had never seen anybody wait at table. In the little pewed eating-houses to which once or twice Joe had taken her, or she had taken Joe, the landlady or a girl brought the food to you and took your plate away, and whisked crumbs on to the floor and asked you what else you wanted; but she felt sure that that was not waiting at table, nor anything like it. So the ideas ran on in her mind -- scores of them following one another in the space of a few seconds, until she shut off the stream with a murmured: "I'm a nice one, I am! " The solitary daemonic figure of Mr. Earlforward, fast in bed, was drawing her upstairs. And the shop was keeping her in the shop. And the plight of Mrs. Earlforward was pulling her away towards St. Bartholomew's Hospital. And there she stood like a regular hard-faced silly, thinking about waiting at table! She must go to Mr. Earlforward instantly, and tell him what had happened.