The only weakness in her faculty came from the positive abundance of her contact with the human herd; this was so constant, it had so the effect of cheapening her privilege, that there were long stretches in which inspiration, divination and interest quite dropped.

The great thing was the flashes, the quick revivals, absolute accidents all, and neither to be counted on nor to be resisted.

Some one had only sometimes to put in a penny for a stamp and the whole thing was upon her.

She was so absurdly constructed that these were literally the moments that made up--made up for the long stiffness of sitting there in the stocks, made up for the cunning hostility of Mr.Buckton and the importunate sympathy of the counter-clerk, made up for the daily deadly flourishy letter from Mr.
Mudge, made up even for the most haunting of her worries, the rage at moments of not knowing how her mother did "get it." She had surrendered herself moreover of late to a certain expansion of her consciousness; something that seemed perhaps vulgarly accounted for by the fact that, as the blast of the season roared louder and the waves of fashion tossed their spray further over the counter, there were more impressions to be gathered and really--for it came to that--more life to be led.

Definite at any rate it was that by the time May was well started the kind of company she kept at Cocker's had begun to strike her as a reason--a reason she might almost put forward for a policy of procrastination.