The hat was taken off and the kiss was given.  There was certainly no chignon there.  Dorothy Stanbury was light haired, with almost flaxen ringlets, worn after the old-fashioned way which we used to think so pretty when we were young.  She had very soft grey eyes, which ever seemed to beseech you to do something when they looked at you, and her mouth was a beseeching mouth.  There are women who, even amidst their strongest efforts at giving assistance to others, always look as though they were asking aid themselves, and such a one was Dorothy Stanbury.  Her complexion was pale, but there was always present in it a tint of pink running here and there, changing with every word she spoke, changing indeed with every pulse of her heart.  Nothing ever was softer than her cheek; but her hands were thin and hard, and almost fibrous with the working of the thread upon them.  She was rather tall than otherwise, but that extreme look of feminine dependence which always accompanied her, took away something even from the appearance of her height.

‘These are all real, at any rate,’ said her aunt, taking hold of the curls, ‘and won’t be hurt by a little cold water.’

Dorothy smiled but said nothing, and was then taken up to her bed-room.  Indeed, when the aunt and niece sat down to dinner together Dorothy had hardly spoken.  But Miss Stanbury had spoken, and things upon the whole had gone very well.

‘I hope you like roast chicken, my dear?’ said Miss Stanbury.

‘Oh, thank you.’

‘And bread sauce?  Jane, I do hope the bread sauce is hot.’

If the reader thinks that Miss Stanbury was indifferent to considerations of the table, the reader is altogether ignorant of Miss Stanbury’s character.  When Miss Stanbury gave her niece the liver-wing, and picked out from the attendant sausages one that had been well browned and properly broken in the frying, she meant to do a real kindness.

’And now, my dear, there are mashed potatoes and bread sauce.  As for green vegetables, I don’t know what has become of them.  They tell me I may have green peas from France at a shilling a quart; but if I can’t have English green peas, I won’t have any.’

Miss Stanbury was standing up as she said this, as she always did on such occasions, liking to have a full mastery over the dish.

‘I hope you like it, my dear?’

‘Everything is so very nice.’

’That’s right.  I like to see a young woman with an appetite.  Remember that God sends the good things for us to eat; and as long as we don’t take more than our share, and give away something to those who haven’t a fair share of their own, I for one think it quite right to enjoy my victuals.  Jane, this bread sauce isn’t hot.  It never is hot.  Don’t tell me; I know what hot is!’

Dorothy thought that her aunt was very angry; but Jane knew Miss Stanbury better, and bore the scolding without shaking in her shoes.