Lydia prepared the breakfast as usual--it seemed quite natural that she should do nearly all the work of the home--and they sat down to it cheerlessly.
Since daybreak a mist had crept over the sky; it thinned the sunlight to a suffusion of grey and gold.

Within the house there was the silence of Sunday morning; the street was still, save for the jodeling of a milkman as he wheeled his clattering cans from house to house.

In that London on the other side of Thames, known to these girls with scarcely less of vagueness than to simple dwellers in country towns, the autumn-like air was foretaste of holiday; the martyrs of the Season and they who do the world's cleaner work knew that rest was near, spoke at breakfast of the shore and the mountain.

Even to Lydia, weary after her short sleep and unwontedly dejected, there came a wish that it were possible to quit the streets for but one day, and sit somewhere apart under the open sky.

It was not often that so fantastic a dream visited her.
In dressing, Thyrza had left her hair unbraided.