se she was young, with the
incomparable, the unique charm of comely adolescence; it simply
excited the imagination to conceive the exquisite treasures of contour
and tint and texture which it veiled. Do not infer that Rachel was
a coquette. Although comely, she was homely--a "downright" girl,
scorning and hating all manner of pretentiousness. She had a fine best
dress, and when she put it on everybody knew that it was her best; a
stranger would have known. Whereas of a coquette none but her intimate
companions can say whether she is wearing best or second-best on a
given high occasion. Rachel used the pinafore-apron only with her best
dress, and her reason for doing so was the sound, sensible reason that
it was the usual and proper thing to do.

She opened a drawer of the new Sheraton sideboard, and took from it
a metal tube that imitated brass, about a foot long and an inch
in diameter, covered with black lettering. This tube, when she
had removed its top, showed a number of thin wax tapers in various
colours. She chose one, lit it neatly at the red fire, and then,
standing on a footstool in the middle of the room, stretched all her
body and limbs upward in order to reach the gas. If the tap had been
half an inch higher or herself half an inch shorter, she would have
had to stand on a chair instead of a footstool; and the chair would
have had to be brought out of the kitchen and carried back again. But
Heaven had watched over this detail. The gas-fitting consisted of a
flexible pipe, resembling a thick black cord, and swinging at the
end of it a specimen of that wonderful and blessed contrivance, the
inverted incandescent mantle within a porcelain globe: the whole
recently adopted by Mrs. Maldon as the dangerous final word of modern
invention. It was safer to ignite the gas from the orifice at the
top of the globe; but even so there was always a mild disconcerting
explosion, followed by a few moments' uncertainty as to whether or not
the gas had "lighted properly."

When the deed was accomplished and the room suddenly bright with soft
illumination, Mrs. Maldon murmured--

"That's better!"

She was sitting in her arm-chair by the glitteringly set table, which,
instead of being in the centre of the floor under the gas, had a place
near the bow-window--advantageous in the murky daytime of the Five
Towns, and inconvenient at night. The table might well have been
shifted at night to a better position in regard to the g