ike. I don't believe she ever looked at herself critically in
a mirror in her life. Her features were rather nice, and her
expression tamely sweet; her eyes were big, timid, china-blue orbs
that looked as if she had been badly scared when she was little and
had never got over it; she never wore anything but black, and, to
crown all, her first name was Alicia.

Miss Ponsonby sat and sewed at her window for hours at a time, but she
never looked our way, partly, I suppose, from habit induced by
modesty, since the former occupants of our room had been two gay
young bachelors, whose names Jerry and I found out all over our
window-panes with a diamond.

Jerry and I sat a great deal at ours, laughing and talking, but Miss
Ponsonby never lifted her head or eyes. Jerry couldn't stand it long;
she declared it got on her nerves; besides, she felt sorry to see a
fellow creature wasting so many precious moments of a fleeting
lifetime at patchwork. So one afternoon she hailed Miss Ponsonby with
a cheerful "hello," and Miss Ponsonby actually looked over and said
"good afternoon," as prim as an eighteen-hundred-and-forty fashion
plate.

Then Jerry, whose name is Geraldine only in the family Bible, talked
to her about the weather. Jerry can talk interestingly about anything.
In five minutes she had performed a miracle--she had made Miss
Ponsonby laugh. In five minutes more she was leaning half out of the
window showing Miss Ponsonby a new, white, fluffy, frivolous, chiffony
waist of hers, and Miss Ponsonby was leaning halfway out of hers
looking at it eagerly. At the end of a quarter of an hour they were
exchanging confidences about their favourite books. Jerry was a
confirmed Kiplingomaniac, but Miss Ponsonby adored Laura Jean Libbey.
She said sorrowfully she supposed she ought not to read novels at all
since her father disapproved. We found out later on that Mr.
Ponsonby's way of expressing disapproval was to burn any he got hold
of, and storm at his daughter about them like the confirmed old crank
he was. Poor Miss Ponsonby had to keep her Laura Jeans locked up in
her trunk, and it wasn't often she got a new one.

From that day dated our friendship with Miss Ponsonby, a curious
friendship, only carried on from window to window. We never saw Miss
Ponsonby anywhere else; we asked her to come over but she said her
father didn't allow her to visit anybody. Miss Ponsonby was one of
those meek women who are ruled by whomsoever happens