and be in a
draught; yet behind it, lest the impossible should arrive, was a heavy
curtain, hung on an iron rod which crossed the room from wall to wall.
Not much imagination was needed to realise the joy and ecstasy of
losing yourself on that squab on a winter afternoon, with the range fire
roaring in your face, and the curtain drawn abaft.

Helen assumed the mathematical centre of the squab, and began to arrange
her skirts in cascading folds; she had posed her parasol in a corner of
it, as though the squab had been a railway carriage, which, indeed, it
did somewhat resemble.

"By the way, lass, what's that as swishes?" James demanded.

"What's what?"

"What's that as swishes?"

She looked puzzled for an instant, then laughed--a frank, gay laugh,
light and bright as aluminium, such as the kitchen had never before
heard.

"Oh!" she said. "It's my new silk petticoat, I suppose. You mean that?"
She brusquely moved her limbs, reproducing the unique and delicious
rustle of concealed silk.

"Ay!" ejaculated the old man, "I mean that."

"Yes. It's my silk petticoat. Do you like it?"

"I havena' seen it, lass."

She bent down, and lifted the hem of her dress just two inches--the
discreetest, the modestest gesture. He had a transient vision of
something fair--it was gone again.

"I don't know as I dislike it," said he.

He was standing facing her, his back to the range, and his head on a
level with the high narrow mantelpiece, upon which glittered a row of
small tin canisters. Suddenly he turned to the corner to the right of
the range, where, next to an oak cupboard, a velvet Turkish smoking cap
depended from a nail. He put on the cap, of which the long tassel curved
down to his ear. Then he faced her again, putting his hands behind him,
and raising himself at intervals on his small, well-polished toes. She
lifted her two hands simultaneously to her head, and began to draw pins
from her hat, which pins she placed one after another between her lips.
Then she lowered the hat carefully from her head, and transfixed it anew
with the pins.

"Will you mind hanging it on that nail?" she requested.

He took it, as though it had been of glass, and hung it on the nail.

Without her hat she looked as if she lived there, a jewel in a
pipe-case. She appeared to be just as much at home as he was. And they
were so at home together that there was no further necessity to strain
after a continuous conversation. With a vague