Sylvia gave a hurried glance at her hair in the glass.

It shone like satin with a gray-gold lustre, folded back smoothly from her temples.
She eyed with a little surprise the red spots of excitement which still remained on her cheeks.

The changelessness of her elderly visage had been evident to her so long that she was startled to see anything else.

"I look as if I had been pulled through a knot-hole," she muttered.
She took off her gingham apron, thrust it hastily into a bureau drawer in the next room, and tied on a clean white one with a hemstitched border.

Then she went down-stairs, the starched white bow of the apron-strings covering her slim back like a Japanese sash.