It was some time before she fell asleep. The high glass faced her as she lay in bed. She could not get away from the idea that it was her mother’s face that every now and then she saw reflected there. “Well, he’s wrong, anyhow,” retorted Flossie. “It’s no good our waiting for man. He is too much afraid of us to be of any real help to us. We shall have to do it ourselves.” She gave Joan a hug and was gone.!

“It doesn’t matter, dearie,” she explained. “They know, if they find it open, that I’m in.” “She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”

He hesitated, keeping his eyes upon the ground. Only once had she ever thought of marriage. And that was in favour of a middle-aged, rheumatic widower with three children, a professor of chemistry, very learned and justly famous. For about a month she had thought herself in love. She pictured herself devoting her life to him, rubbing his poor left shoulder where it seemed he suffered most, and brushing his picturesque hair, inclined to grey. Fortunately his eldest daughter was a young woman of resource, or the poor gentleman, naturally carried off his feet by this adoration of youth and beauty, might have made an ass of himself. But apart from this one episode she had reached the age of twenty-three heart-whole. Joan was puzzled what to say. She knew exactly what she ought to say: what she would have said to any ordinary child. But to say it to this uncannily knowing little creature did not promise much good.