“Oh no,” said Rachel.  “It’s hard!”

Miss Allan looked at Rachel quietly, saying nothing; she suspected that there were difficulties of some kind.  Then she put her hand to the back of her head, and discovered that one of the grey coils of hair had come loose.

“I must ask you to be so kind as to excuse me,” she said, rising, “if I do my hair.  I have never yet found a satisfactory type of hairpin.  I must change my dress, too, for the matter of that; and I should be particularly glad of your assistance, because there is a tiresome set of hooks which I can fasten for myself, but it takes from ten to fifteen minutes; whereas with your help—­”

She slipped off her coat and skirt and blouse, and stood doing her hair before the glass, a massive homely figure, her petticoat being so short that she stood on a pair of thick slate-grey legs.

“People say youth is pleasant; I myself find middle age far pleasanter,” she remarked, removing hair pins and combs, and taking up her brush.  When it fell loose her hair only came down to her neck.

“When one was young,” she continued, “things could seem so very serious if one was made that way. . . .  And now my dress.”

In a wonderfully short space of time her hair had been reformed in its usual loops.  The upper half of her body now became dark green with black stripes on it; the skirt, however, needed hooking at various angles, and Rachel had to kneel on the floor, fitting the eyes to the hooks.

“Our Miss Johnson used to find life very unsatisfactory, I remember,” Miss Allan continued.  She turned her back to the light.  “And then she took to breeding guinea-pigs for their spots, and became absorbed in that.  I have just heard that the yellow guinea-pig has had a black baby.  We had a bet of sixpence on about it.  She will be very triumphant.”

The skirt was fastened.  She looked at herself in the glass with the curious stiffening of her face generally caused by looking in the glass.

“Am I in a fit state to encounter my fellow-beings?” she asked.  “I forget which way it is—­but they find black animals very rarely have coloured babies—­it may be the other way round.  I have had it so often explained to me that it is very stupid of me to have forgotten again.”

She moved about the room acquiring small objects with quiet force, and fixing them about her—­a locket, a watch and chain, a heavy gold bracelet, and the parti-coloured button of a suffrage society.  Finally, completely equipped for Sunday tea, she stood before Rachel, and smiled at her kindly.  She was not an impulsive woman, and her life had schooled her to restrain her tongue.  At the same time, she was possessed of an amount of good-will towards others, and in particular towards the young, which often made her regret that speech was so difficult.

“Shall we descend?” she said.

She put one hand upon Rachel’s shoulder, and stooping, picked up a pair of walking-shoes with the other, and placed them neatly side by side outside her door.  As they walked down the passage they passed many pairs of boots and shoes, some black and some brown, all side by side, and all different, even to the way in which they lay together.