and a stocking always on the wire for odd moments, and gossiped
like a matron with the other women, and humoured the men with a
tolerant smile - all these things she did as a matter of course,
leaping joyful from bed in the morning because there was so much to
do, doing it as thoroughly and sedately as if the brides were
already due for a lesson, and then rushing out in a fit of
childishness to play dumps or palaulays with others of her age. I
see her frocks lengthening, though they were never very short, and
the games given reluctantly up. The horror of my boyhood was that
I knew a time would come when I also must give up the games, and
how it was to be done I saw not (this agony still returns to me in
dreams, when I catch myself playing marbles, and look on with cold
displeasure); I felt that I must continue playing in secret, and I
took this shadow to her, when she told me her own experience, which
convinced us both that we were very like each other inside. She
had discovered that work is the best fun after all, and I learned
it in time, but have my lapses, and so had she.

I know what was her favourite costume when she was at the age that
they make heroines of: it was a pale blue with a pale blue bonnet,
the white ribbons of which tied aggravatingly beneath the chin, and
when questioned about this garb she never admitted that she looked
pretty in it, but she did say, with blushes too, that blue was her
colour, and then she might smile, as at some memory, and begin to
tell us about a man who - but it ended there with another smile
which was longer in departing. She never said, indeed she denied
strenuously, that she had led the men a dance, but again the smile
returned, and came between us and full belief. Yes, she had her
little vanities; when she got the Mizpah ring she did carry that
finger in such a way that the most reluctant must see. She was