Lydia stood behind the chair again, and the laughing caress was exchanged.

‘I should stay,’ Thyrza went on, ’if it was only to have you do my hair.  I do so like to feel your soft hands!’

‘Soft hands!  Great coarse things.  Just look!’

She took one of Thyrza’s, and held it beside her own.  The difference was noticeable enough; Lydia’s was not ill-shapen, but there were marks on it of all the rough household work which she had never permitted her sister to do.  Thyrza’s was delicate, supple, beautiful in its kind as her face.

‘I don’t care!’ she said laughing.  ‘It’s a good, soft, sleepy hand.’

‘Sleepy, child!’

‘I mean it always makes me feel dozy when it’s doing my hair.’

There was no more cloud between them.  The morning passed on with sisterly talk.  Lydia had wisely refrained from exacting promises; she hoped to resume the subject before long—­together with another that was in her mind.  Thyrza, too, had something to speak of, but could not bring herself to it as yet.

Though it was so hot, they had to keep a small fire for cooking the dinner.  This meal consisted of a small piece of steak, chosen from the odds and ends thrown together on the front of a butcher’s shop, and a few potatoes.  It was not always they had meat; yet they never went hungry, and, in comparing herself with others she knew, it sometimes made Lydia a little unhappy to think how well she lived.

Then began the unutterable dreariness of a Sunday afternoon.  From the lower part of the house sounded the notes of a concertina; it was Mr. Jarmey who played.  He had the habit of doing so whilst half asleep, between dinner and tea.  With impartiality he passed from strains of popular hymnody to the familiar ditties of the music hall, lavishing on each an excess of sentiment.  He shook pathetically on top notes and languished on final chords.  A dolorous music!

The milkman came along the street.  He was followed by a woman who wailed ‘wa-ater-creases!’ Then the concertina once more possessed the stillness.  Few pedestrians were abroad; the greater part of the male population of Lambeth slumbered after the baked joint and flagon of ale.  Yet here and there a man in his shirt-sleeves leaned forth despondently from a window or sat in view within, dozing over the Sunday paper.

A rattling of light wheels drew near, and a nasal voice cried ’’Okey-pokey!  ‘Okey-’okey-’okey Penny a lump!’ It was the man who sold ice-cream.  He came to a stop, and half a dozen boys gathered about his truck.  The delicacy was dispensed to them in little green and yellow glasses, from which they extracted it with their tongues.  The vendor remained for a few minutes, then on again with his ‘’Okey’-okey-’okey!’ sung through the nose.

Next came a sound of distressful voices, whining the discords of a mendicant psalm.  A man, a woman, and two small children crawled along the street; their eyes surveyed the upper windows.  All were ragged and filthy; the elders bore the unmistakable brand of the gin-shop, and the children were visaged like debased monkeys.  Occasionally a copper fell to them, in return for which the choragus exclaimed ‘Gord bless yer!’