says that she wasn't clever then a bit--rather stupid and shy--but you
never know. Jealousy on old Grandon's part, I expect. They say she's
wonderful still."

Questions of taste never worried May Eversley, and it did not worry her
now that Rachel might dislike so penetrating an inquisition. But at
least May got nothing for her trouble. Rachel told her nothing.

May's final word was, "You care too much about it all--care whether it's
going to hurt, whether it's going to be frightening or not. My advice to
you is, just dash in, snatch what you can, and dash out again. It
doesn't matter a hair-pin what anyone says. Everyone says everything in
London, and nobody minds. They've all got the shortest memories."

Rachel, sitting now in her little room and thinking of Munich wondered
how completely her own discovery of London would coincide with May's.
May's idea of it was certainly not Aunt Adela's. Aunt Adela, Rachel
thought, was far too dried and brittle to risk any sharp contact with
anything. None of her uncles, she further reflected, liked sharp
contacts, and yet, how continually grandmother provided them!

How comfortable all of them--Aunt Adela and the uncles--would be without
their mother, and yet how proud they were of having her! For herself,
Rachel faced her approaching deliverance with a tightening of all the
muscles of her body. "I won't care. It shall be as May says--and there
are sure to be some comfortable people about, some people who want to
make it pleasant for one."

Then there was a tap at the door and Uncle John came in. Uncle John
often came in about half-past five. It was a convenient time for him to
come, but also, perhaps, he recognized that that approaching half-hour
that Rachel was to have with his mother demanded, beforehand, some kind
of easy, amiable prologue.

To-day, however, there was more in his comfortable smiling countenance
than merely paying a visit warranted. He stood for a moment at the door
looking over at her, rather fat but not very, his white hair, his pearl
pin, his white spats all gleaming, a rosiness and a cleanliness always
about him so that he seemed, at any moment of the day, to have come
straight from his tub, having jumped, in his eagerness to see you, into
his beautiful clothes, and hurried, all in a glow, to get to you.

"They're all chattering downstairs--chattering like anything. There's
Roddy Seddon, old Lady Carloes and Crewner and some young ass Crewner's
broug