"At Mrs Lippincote's"

[fiefoe]

I left off this book for too long, and couldn't even remember who's who among the communists.  

Our heroine:

• 'They have patience and method,' she decided, 'but they are always too late. I, with my makeshift, have always arrived before them.'
• She felt at bay against the calm and decision of the other two.
• After this, there was bread and butter and egg sandwiches left over from the train and from supper.
• Julia found what she thought 'a nice lad' waiting with a parcel in his hand. He straightened up stiffly to resist the charming way in which she tried to console him for not being an officer.
• "I love myself," she said lightly... "And then," she added, "miles down the scale, in a vague, bewildered way, I love you." Then he knew she was truly drunk.
• Could (Julia) have taken for granted a few of those generalisations invented by men and largely acquiesced in by women (that women live by their hearts,...) she would have eased her own life and other people's.
• "You and Oliver both read too much," said Roddy, self-righteously.
• Her love for Roddy persisted while they drank their cocoa and went up to bed.<>He realised her worries about Oliver were for the time-being over; she no longer needed him to sustain her.
• (After 'the old man''s surprise visit:) "On the bed! My dear Julia! Did Oliver behave?"  <>  "I think we both behaved," she said kindly,
• It is seldom safe to confide in lonely people... Julia was tied to a wide circle of people by their secrets, almost as if she were a maypole with her ribbons in a multitude of hands. <> Her own fallibility drew others to her.
• "The whole business about bringing up children," she explained to herself rather self-righteously, "is to know when to lose one's patience."
• She was too busy, as a rule, measuring up and deploring other people to be in any way conscious of herself.

__ The kitchen... was like the baser side of someone's nature. Beyond the plush curtains, the house put aside all show of decency.
__ She knew, at her age, that people mean different things in different places.

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