《Rose-coloured Teacup玫瑰色茶杯》.doc

There were three women in the room, two sitting in low, oval-backed armchairs, and one on the end of a bed, her pale head lit by a summer window, her face slightly shadowed. They were young women, full of energy; this could be seen in the quick, alert turns of the heads, the movements of hand to mouth, carrying a cigarette in a long holder, a rose-coloured teacup. They wore knee-length shifts, one olive, one russet (sometimes it was a kind of dull crimson), one, belonging to the pale head, a clotted cream or blanket-wool colour. They all had smooth but not shining pale stockings and barred, buttoned shoes, with pointed toes and very small heels. One dark woman, in a chair, had long hair, knotted in the nape of her neck. The other two were shingled. The pale-headed woman, when she turned her head to look out of the window, could be seen to have the most beautiful slanting ledge of shorn silver and gold from the turn of her skull to the fine neck. She had a fine-edged upper lip, still and calm; a composed look, but expectant. The third woman was harder to see; the haircut was decisive and mannish; Veronica had to resist seeing it as she had always known it, pepper and salt.She could see the chairs very clearly, one with a pale green linen cover, fitted, and one with a creased chintz, covered with large, floppy roses. She could see the little fire, with its dusty coal scuttle and brass fire-irons. Sometimes she saw it burning brightly, but mostly it was dark, because it was summer outside, and through the window, between the rosy chintz curtains, there was the unchanging college garden with its rosebeds and packed herbaceous border, its sunken pool and smell of mown grass. There were leaves coiling into the picture round the outside of the window-frame a climbing rose, a creeper, what was it? She could see a desk, not very clearly. It was no good straining to see; it was necessary to wait quietly. There was a dark corner containing a piece of furniture she had never