ried so hard to restrain it, coiling it tight at the back, and
smoothing it sleek as a bird's wing above her brows. Mouse-colored hair
it was on the top, and shining gold at the temples and at the roots that
curled away under the coil.

She wore a brown skirt, and a green bodice with a linen collar, and a
knot of brown ribbon at her throat.

Thus attired, for three days Rose waited on him. For three days she
never spoke a word except to tell him that a meal was ready.

In three days he noticed a remarkable increase in his material comfort.
There was about Rose a shining cleanliness that imparted itself to
everything she laid her hands on. (Her hands were light in their touch
and exquisitely gentle.) His writing-table was like a shrine that she
tended. Every polished surface of it shone, and every useful thing lay
ready to his hand. Not a paper out of its order, or a pen out of its
place. The charm was that he never caught her at it. In all her
ministrations Rose was secret and silent and unseen.

Only every evening at nightfall he heard the street door open, and
Rose's voice calling into the darkness, sending out a cry that had the
magic and rhythm of a song, "Puss--Puss--Puss," she called;
"Minny--Min--Min--Minny--Puss--Puss--Puss." That was the hymn with which
Rose saluted the night. It ought to have irritated him, but it didn't.

It was all he heard of her, till on the fourth evening she broke her
admirable silence. She had just removed the tablecloth, shyly, from
under the book he was reading.

"It isn't good for you to read at meal-times, sir."

"I know it isn't. But what are you to do if you've nobody to talk to?"

A long silence. It seemed as if Rose was positively thinking.

"You should go out more, sir."

"I don't like going out."

Silence again. Rose had folded up the cloth and put it away in its
drawer. Yet she lingered.

"Would you like to see the little dogs, sir?"

"Little dogs? I didn't know there were any."

"We keep them very quiet; but we've seven. We've a fox and a dandy"
(Rose grew breathless with excitement), "and an Aberdeen, and two
Aberdeen pups, and two Poms, a mole and a white. May they come up, sir?"

"By all means let them come up."

She ran down-stairs, and returned with the seven little dogs at her
heels. Tanqueray held out his hand invitingly. (He was fond of animals.)
The fox and the dandy sniffed him suspiciously. The old Aberdeen ran
away from him backwards, showing h