Backwater by Dorothy M. Richardson — Read

The Henderson party found Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim plank-floored corridor leading from the station to the main building of the Crystal Palace. When the quiet greetings were over and they had arranged a meeting-place at the end of the evening in case any of the party should be lost, they all tramped on up the resounding corridor. Miriam found herself bringing up the rear with Mr. Parrow. They were going on up the corridor, through the Palace and out into the summer evening. They had all come to go out into the summer evening and see the fireworks. All but she had come meaning to get quite near to the "set pieces" and to look at them. She had not said anything about meaning to get as far away from the fireworks as possible. She had been trusting to Mr. Parrow for that. Now that she was with him she felt that perhaps it was not quite fair. He had come meaning to see the fireworks. He would be disappointed.

She would be obliged to tell him presently, when they got out into the night. They were all tramping quickly up along the echoing corridor. No one seemed to be talking, just feet, tramp, tramp on the planking, rather quickly. It was like the sound of workmen's feet on the inside scaffolding of a half-built house. The corridor was like something in the Hospital for Incurables. that strange old woman sitting in the hall with bent head laughing over her crochet, and Miss Garrett whom they had come to see sitting up in bed, a curtained bed in a ward, with a pleated mobcap all over the top of her head and halfway down her forehead, sitting back against large square pillows with her hands clasped on the neat bedclothes and a "sweet, patient" look on her face, coughing gently and spitting, spitting herself to death. rushing away out of the ward to wait for mother downstairs in the hall with the curious smells and the dreadful old woman. What was it, chick? .