ached; her face flared with her exertions. She
was ravenous--she must manage somehow and go down. She braided the
long strands and fastened their cold mass with extra hairpins. Then
she unfastened the Hinde's--two tendrils flopped limply against her
forehead. She combed them out. They fell in a curtain of streaks to her
nose. Feverishly she divided them, draped them somehow back into the
rest of her hair and fastened them.

"Oh," she breathed, "my _ghastly_ forehead."

It was all she could do--short of gas and curling tongs. Even the candle
was taken away in the daytime.

It was cold and bleak upstairs. Her wet hair lay in a heavy mass against
her burning head. She was painfully hungry. She went down.

20

The snarling rattle of the coffee mill sounded out into the hall.
Several voices were speaking together as she entered. Fraulein Pfaff
was not there. Gertrude Goldring was grinding the coffee. The girls were
sitting round the table in easy attitudes and had the effect of holding
a council. Emma, her elbows on the table, her little face bunched with
scorn, put out a motherly arm and set a chair for Miriam. Jimmie had
flung some friendly remark as she came in. Miriam did not hear what she
said, but smiled responsively. She wanted to get quietly to her place
and look round. There was evidently something in the air. They all
seemed preoccupied. Perhaps no one would notice how awful she looked.
"You're not the only one, my dear," she said to herself in her mother's
voice. "No," she replied in person, "but no one will be looking so
perfectly frightful as me."

"I say, do they know you're down?" said Gertrude hospitably, as the
boiling water snored on to the coffee.

Emma rushed to the lift and rattled the panel.

"Anna!" she ordered, "Meece Hendshon! Suppe!"

"Oh, thanks," said Miriam, in general. She could not meet anyone's eye.
The coffee cups were being slid up to Gertrude's end of the table and
rapidly filled by her. Gertrude, of course, she noticed had contrived to
look dashing and smart. Her hair, with the exception of some wild ends
that hung round her face was screwed loosely on the top of her head
and transfixed with a dagger-like tortoise-shell hair ornament--like
a Japanese--Indian--no, Maori--that was it, she looked like a New
Zealander. Clara and Minna had fastened up theirs with combs and ribbons
and looked decent--frauish though, thought Miriam. Judy wore a plait.
Without her fuzzy cloud she