The old man, with a long face, eyes rimmed like a parrot’s, and discoloured nose, who, so long as he did not sit down, was permitted to frequent the pavement just there and sell the ‘Westminster Gazette’, marked her, and took his empty pipe out of his mouth.

It was his business to know all the passers-by, and his pleasure too; his mind was thus distracted from the condition of his feet.  He knew this particular lady with the delicate face, and found her puzzling; she sometimes bought the paper which Fate condemned him, against his politics, to sell.  The Tory journals were undoubtedly those which her class of person ought to purchase.  He knew a lady when he saw one.  In fact, before Life threw him into the streets, by giving him a disease in curing which his savings had disappeared, he had been a butler, and for the gentry had a respect as incurable as was his distrust of “all that class of people” who bought their things at “these ’ere large establishments,” and attended “these ’ere subscription dances at the Town ’All over there.”  He watched her with special interest, not, indeed, attempting to attract attention, though conscious in every fibre that he had only sold five copies of his early issues.  And he was sorry and surprised when she passed from his sight through one of the hundred doors.

The thought which spurred her into Messrs. Rose and Thorn’s was this:  “I am thirty-eight; I have a daughter of seventeen.  I cannot afford to lose my husband’s admiration.  The time is on me when I really must make myself look nice!”

Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed hundreds of women’s bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose unruffled surface reflected daily a dozen women’s souls divested of everything, her eyes became as bright as steel; but having ascertained the need of taking two inches off the chest of the gentian frock, one off its waist, three off its hips, and of adding one to its skirt, they clouded again with doubt, as though prepared to fly from the decision she had come to.  Resuming her bodice, she asked: 

“When could you let me have it?”

“At the end of the week, madam.”

“Not till then?”

“We are very pressed, madam.”

“Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please.”

The fitter sighed:  “I will do my best.”

“I shall rely on you.  Mrs. Stephen Dallison, 76, The Old Square.”

Going downstairs she thought:  “That poor girl looked very tired; it’s a shame they give them such long hours!” and she passed into the street.

A voice said timidly behind her:  “Westminister, marm?”

“That’s the poor old creature,” thought Cecilia Dallison, “whose nose is so unpleasant.  I don’t really think I—­” and she felt for a penny in her little bag.  Standing beside the “poor old creature” was a woman clothed in worn but neat black clothes, and an ancient toque which had once known a better head.  The wan remains of a little bit of fur lay round her throat.  She had a thin face, not without refinement, mild, very clear brown eyes, and a twist of smooth black hair.  Beside her was a skimpy little boy, and in her arms a baby.  Mrs. Dallison held out two-pence for the paper, but it was at the woman that she looked.