Be careful what you're doing, or she'll make you wet down yours!' All that was like the little Persian kitten within Cecilia--cosiness and love of pretty things, attachment to her own abode with its high-art lining, love for her mate and her own kitten, Thyme, dread of disturbance--all made her long to push this woman from the room; this woman with the skimpy figure, and eyes that, for all their patience, had in them something virago-like; this woman who carried about with her an atmosphere of sordid grief, of squalid menaces, and scandal.

She longed all the more because it could well be seen from the seamstress's helpless attitude that she too would have liked an easy life.

To dwell on things like this was to feel more than thirty-eight! Cecilia had no pocket, Providence having removed it now for some time past, but from her little bag she drew forth the two essentials of gentility.

Taking her nose, which she feared was shining, gently within one, she fumbled in the other.

And again she looked doubtfully at Mrs.
Hughs.