For herself, Miss Lancaster had always hated the sight of hats, and had taken up the work merely because a place in Brandywine & Plummer's had been offered her shortly after her father, a gallant fighter but a poor worker, had gone to end his kindly anecdotal days in the Home for Confederate Soldiers.

She was a repressed, conscientious woman, who had never been younger than she was now at fifty, and who regarded youth, not with envy, but with admiring awe.

For she, also, patient and uncomplaining creature, belonged to that world of decay and inertia from which Gabriella had revolted.

It was a world where things happened to-day just as they happened yesterday, where no miracles had occurred since the miracles of Scripture, where people hated change, not because they were satisfied, but because they were incapable of imagination.
Miss Lancaster, who had never wanted anything with passion, except to be a perfect lady, was proud of the fact that she had been twenty years in business without losing her "shrinking manner." "Yes, you have an eye for colour," she repeated gently; "if you could only learn to sew, you might command a most desirable position." "I despise sewing," replied Gabriella, with serene good-humour, "and I could never learn, even at school, anything that I despised.

But I suppose I can always tell somebody else how it ought to be done." Then, because her work always interested her, she forgot the disturbing words Mrs.Spencer had spoken--she forgot even her impatience to feel the June air in her face.