ome and the door shuts. It's the home that we are going to alter and
replace--and what is it like?" Mr. Brumley took her for walks in
Highbury and the newer parts of Hendon and over to Clapham. "I want to
go inside those doors," she said.

"That's just what they won't let you do," said Mr. Brumley. "Nobody
visits but relations--and prospective relations, and the only other
social intercourse is over the garden wall. Perhaps I can find
books----"

He got her novels by Edwin Pugh and Pett Ridge and Frank Swinnerton and
George Gissing. They didn't seem to be attractive homes. And it seemed
remarkable to her that no woman had ever given the woman's view of the
small London home from the inside....

She overcame her own finer scruples and invaded the Burnet household.
Apart from fresh aspects of Susan's character in the capacity of a
hostess she gained little light from that. She had never felt so
completely outside a home in her life as she did when she was in the
Burnets' parlour. The very tablecloth on which the tea was spread had an
air of being new and protective of familiar things; the tea was
manifestly quite unlike their customary tea, it was no more intimate
than the confectioner's shop window from which it mostly came; the whole
room was full of the muffled cries of things hastily covered up and
specially put away. Vivid oblongs on the faded wallpaper betrayed even a
rearrangement of the pictures. Susan's mother was a little dingy woman,
wearing a very smart new cap to the best of her ability; she had an air
of having been severely shaken up and admonished, and her general
bearing confessed only too plainly how shattered those preparations had
left her. She watched her capable daughter for cues. Susan's sisters
displayed a disposition to keep their backs against something and at the
earliest opportunity to get into the passage and leave Susan and her
tremendous visitor alone but within earshot. They started convulsively
when they were addressed and insisted on "your ladyship." Susan had told
them not to but they would. When they supposed themselves to be
unobserved they gave themselves up to the impassioned inspection of Lady
Harman's costume. Luke had fled into the street, and in spite of various
messages conveyed to him by the youngest sister he refused to enter
until Lady Harman had gone again and was well out of the way. And Susan
was no longer garrulous and at her ease; she had no pins in her mouth
and that