(Mrs. Lisphin had just brought home my things at bedtime); and there was a place to do the world’s washing in, or bleach out all the Ethiopians!  Tubs like the hold of the Great Eastern, and spouts coming into them like the Staubbach!  Clothes-lines like a parade-ground of telegraphs, fields like prairies, snow-patched, as far as you could see, with things laid out to whiten!  And suddenly we came to what was like a pond of milk, with crowds of negro women stirring it with long poles; and all at once something came roaring behind and you called to me to jump aside,—­that the hot water was let on to make the starch; and down it rushed, a cataract like Niagara, in clouds of steam!  And then—­well, it changed to something else, I suppose; but it was after that fashion all night long, and the last I remember, I was trying to climb up the Cairn with a cup of cold water set on atilt at the crown of my head, which I was to get to the sky parlor without spilling a drop!”

“Nobody’s brain but yours would have put it together like that,” said Miss Craydocke, laughing till she had to feel for her pocket-handkerchief to wipe away the tears.

“Don’t cry, Miss Craydocke,” said Sin Saxon, changing suddenly to the most touching tone and expression of regretful concern.  “I didn’t mean to distress you.  I don’t think anything is really the matter with my brain!”

“But I’ll tell you what it is,” she went on presently, in her old manner, “I am in a dreadful way with that waterfall, and I wish you’d lend me one of your caps, or advise me what to do.  It’s an awful thing when the fashion alters, just as you’ve got used to the last one.  You can’t go back, and you don’t dare to go forward.  I wish hair was like noses, born in a shape, without giving you any responsibility.  But we do have to finish ourselves, and that’s just what makes us restless.”

“You haven’t come to the worst yet,” said Miss Craydocke significantly.

“What do you mean?  What is the worst?  Will it come all at once, or will it be broken to me?”

“It will be broken, and that’s the worst.  One of these years you’ll find a little thin spot coming, may be, and spreading, over your forehead or on the top of your head; and it’ll be the fashion to comb the hair just so as to show it off and make it worse; and for a while that’ll be your thorn in the flesh.  And then you’ll begin to wonder why the color isn’t so bright as it used to be, but looks dingy, all you can do to it; and again, after a while, some day, in a strong light, you’ll see there are white threads in it, and the rest is fading; and so by degrees, and the degrees all separate pains, you’ll have to come to it and give up the crown of your youth, and take to scraps of lace and muslin, or a front, as I did a dozen years ago.”

Sin Saxon had no sauciness to give back for that; it made her feel all at once that this old Miss Craydocke had really been a girl too, with golden hair like her own, perhaps,—­and not so very far in the past, either, but that a like space in her own future could picture itself to her mind; and something, quite different in her mood from ordinary, made her say, with even an unconscious touch of reverence in her voice:  “I wonder if I shall bear it, when it comes, as well as you!”