consider tiresome of me. But Richard has been so much away, and
even when he's at home he is out at the works laboratory so much of the
time, that I've often wanted someone nice to come and live in the house,
who'd talk to me occasionally and be a companion. Perhaps you'll think
it is absurd of me to look on you as a companion, because I am much
older. But then I reckon things concerning age in rather a curious way.
You're eighteen, aren't you?"

"Eighteen past," Ellen agreed, in a tone that implied she felt a certain
compunction in leaving it like that, so near was she to nineteen. But
her birthday had been a fortnight ago.

"And I was nineteen when Richard was born. So you see to me a girl of
eighteen is a woman, capable of understanding everything and feeling
everything. So I hope you won't mind if I treat you as an equal." She
raised her wineglass and looked over its brim at the girl's proud,
solemn gaze, limpid with intentions of being worthy of this honour,
bright with the discovery that perhaps she did not dislike the other
woman as much as she had thought, and she flushed deeply and set the
wineglass down again, and, leaning forward, spoke in a forced, wooden
tone. "I meant, you know, to say that to you, anyhow, whether I felt it
or not. I knew you'd like it. You see, you get very evasive if you've
ever been in a position like mine. You have to make servants like you so
that they won't give notice when they hear the village gossip, because
you must have a well-run house for your child. You have to make people
like you so that they will let the children play with yours. So one gets
into a habit of saying a thing that will be found pleasant, without
particularly worrying whether it's sincere. But this I find I really
mean."

As always, the suspicion that she was in the presence of somebody who
had the singular bad luck to be unhappy changed Ellen on the instant to
something soft as a kitten, incapable of resentment as an angel. "Well,
I've got a habit of saying the things that will be found unpleasant,"
she said hopefully, in tones tremulous with kindness. "I'm just as
likely to say something that'll rouse a person's dander as you are to
say something that'll quiet it down. We ought to be awful good for one
another."

Mrs. Yaverland turned on Ellen a glance which recognised her quality as
queer and precious, yet was not endearing and helped her nothing in the
girl's heart. For she was considering Ellen for wh