be able to repay
a minute part of it. She looked about accordingly for something to
show her. The room did not provide much entertainment. She touched
her manuscript. "Age of Chaucer; Age of Elizabeth; Age of Dryden,"
she reflected; "I'm glad there aren't many more ages. I'm still in the
middle of the eighteenth century. Won't you sit down, Miss Vinrace? The
chair, though small, is firm. . . . Euphues. The germ of the English
novel," she continued, glancing at another page. "Is that the kind of
thing that interests you?"

She looked at Rachel with great kindness and simplicity, as though
she would do her utmost to provide anything she wished to have. This
expression had a remarkable charm in a face otherwise much lined with
care and thought.

"Oh no, it's music with you, isn't it?" she continued, recollecting,
"and I generally find that they don't go together. Sometimes of course
we have prodigies--" She was looking about her for something and now saw
a jar on the mantelpiece which she reached down and gave to Rachel. "If
you put your finger into this jar you may be able to extract a piece of
preserved ginger. Are you a prodigy?"

But the ginger was deep and could not be reached.

"Don't bother," she said, as Miss Allan looked about for some other
implement. "I daresay I shouldn't like preserved ginger."

"You've never tried?" enquired Miss Allan. "Then I consider that it is
your duty to try now. Why, you may add a new pleasure to life, and as
you are still young--" She wondered whether a button-hook would do. "I
make it a rule to try everything," she said. "Don't you think it
would be very annoying if you tasted ginger for the first time on your
death-bed, and found you never liked anything so much? I should be
so exceedingly annoyed that I think I should get well on that account
alone."

She was now successful, and a lump of ginger emerged on the end of the
button-hook. While she went to wipe the button-hook, Rachel bit the
ginger and at once cried, "I must spit it out!"

"Are you sure you have really tasted it?" Miss Allan demanded.

For answer Rachel threw it out of the window.

"An experience anyhow," said Miss Allan calmly. "Let me see--I have
nothing else to offer you, unless you would like to taste this." A small
cupboard hung above her bed, and she took out of it a slim elegant jar
filled with a bright green fluid.

"Creme de Menthe," she said. "Liqueur, you know. It looks as if I drank,
doesn't it