He read it out to her, enjoying his composition and pleased with his reconcilement of differences.  ’So you say what you feel yourself, madam, and allow for the feelings on the other side,’ he remarked.  ’Shall I fold it?

There was a smoothness in the letter particularly agreeable to her troubled wits, but with an awful taste.  She hesitated to assent:  it seemed like a drug that she was offered.

Patrick sketched a series of hooked noses on the blotter.  He heard a lady’s name announced at the door, and glancing up from his work he beheld a fiery vision.

Mrs. Adister addressed her affectionately:  ‘My dear Jane!’ Patrick was introduced to Miss Mattock.

His first impression was that the young lady could wrestle with him and render it doubtful of his keeping his legs.  He was next engaged in imagining that she would certainly burn and be a light in the dark.  Afterwards he discovered her feelings to be delicate, her looks pleasant.  Thereupon came one of the most singular sensations he had ever known:  he felt that he was unable to see the way to please her.  She confirmed it by her remarks and manner of speaking.  Apparently she was conducting a business.

’You’re right, my dear Mrs. Adister, I’m on my way to the Laundry, and I called to get Captain Con to drive there with me and worry the manageress about the linen they turn out:  for gentlemen are complaining of their shirt-fronts, and if we get a bad name with them it will ruin us.  Women will listen to a man.  I hear he has gone down to the city.  I must go and do it alone.  Our accounts are flourishing, I’m glad to say, though we cannot yet afford to pay for a secretary, and we want one.  John and I verified them last night.  We’re aiming at steam, you know.  In three or four years we may found a steam laundry on our accumulated capital.  If only we can establish it on a scale to let us give employment to at least as many women as we have working now!  That is what I want to hear of.  But if we wait for a great rival steam laundry to start ahead of us, we shall be beaten and have to depend on the charitable sentiments of rich people to support the Institution.  And that won’t do.  So it’s a serious question with us to think of taking the initiative:  for steam must come.  It ’s a scandal every day that it doesn’t while we have coal.  I’m for grand measures.  At the same time we must not be imprudent:  turning off hands, even temporarily, that have to feed infants, would be quite against my policy.’

Her age struck Patrick as being about twenty-three.

‘Could my nephew Arthur be of any use to you?’ said Mrs. Adister.

‘Colonel Adister?’ Miss Mattock shook her head.  ‘No.’

‘Arthur can be very energetic when he takes up a thing.’  ’Can he?  But, Mrs. Adister, you are looking a little troubled.  Sometimes you confide in me.  You are so good to us with your subscriptions that I always feel in your debt.’