Suddenly Marie leaned upon her mother and obeyed.  She was lying on her bed under the pink quilt, and Mrs. Amber had her hat and coat and walking-shoes off, and the gas fire began to purr, and a heavenly comfort visited her.  She knew reluctantly that these matrons were horribly wise women, after all.  She looked into her mother’s eyes, and saw there the question which cried in her heart, but she could not read it.  It was too old for her.

Mrs. Amber said equably: 

“Now I’ll run into the kitchen and find what I shall find, my dear.  You’re not to trouble yourself to think and tell me what; I was housekeeping before you were born.  And meanwhile, if I were you, I’d undo my frock and take off my corsets and be really comfortable.  You be a good girl, dear, and do as you’re told just this once, to please your silly old mother.”

Docilely Marie sat up, unhooked her trim skirt-band, and unfastened her corsets.  At once she felt lightened. How wise these dreadful matrons were!  She did more; she cast her skirt and blouse aside with the corsets, and when Mrs. Amber returned she found her lying rest fully under the eiderdown, untrammelled, in thin petticoat and camisole.

“Eggs?” said Marie, craning her neck to look.  “They were for Osborn’s breakfast—­two boiled eggs, mother.”

“Well, they’re poached now, duck,” said Mrs. Amber; “they’ve gone to glory.  Let Osborn have bacon; there’s half a dozen rashers in your larder.”

“He had bacon this morning.”

“Let him have it again,” said the comfortable lady.

“Julia’s coming to dinner to-night,” Marie confided to her mother.  “Osborn’s dining with Mr. Rokeby, but he’s sending us both to the theatre.  Isn’t it kind of him?”

Mrs. Amber nodded smilingly.

“He hates me to be dull,” said Marie.

Again Mrs. Amber nodded smilingly; she thought what a make-believe world these young brides lived in, and then she sighed.

All that afternoon she tended Marie, and gave her tea, and fulfilled her offer of setting the dinner forward before she went away, with the inquiry still in her heart.

Marie was better.

She rose from her bed about six o’clock, pleased as a cat with the warm room, and set about the business of her toilet.  Sitting down to the dressing-table, she looked long and earnestly at her face; the rest she had taken had plumped and coloured it again, but there was a something, a kind of frailty, a blue darkness under the eyes.  Perhaps it made her look less pretty?  She was inclined to fret over it a trifle.  To counteract it she dressed her hair with a fluffy softness unusual to her trim style; she took immense pains over her finger-nails and put on her best high frock.  She hurried over her preparations, having been reluctant to leave her bed till the last possible moment.  Mrs. Amber had laid the dinner-table, but there were still things to do.