day School,
and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force
of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar
spoke to Mr. Houghton--nay, the very way she addressed herself to
him--"What do _you_ think, Mr. Houghton?"--then there seemed to be
assumed an immediacy of correspondence between the two, and an
unquestioned priority in their unison, his and hers, which was a
cruel thorn in Miss Frost's outspoken breast. This sort of secret
intimacy and secret exulting in having, _really_, the chief power,
was most repugnant to the white-haired woman. Not that there was, in
fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted correspondence between
James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would
have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the
extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two
psyches, an immediacy of understanding which preceded all
expression, tacit, wireless.

Miss Pinnegar lived in: so that the household consisted of the
invalid, who mostly sat, in her black dress with a white lace collar
fastened by a twisted gold brooch, in her own dim room, doing
nothing, nervous and heart-suffering; then James, and the thin young
Alvina, who adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, and then these two
strange women. Miss Pinnegar never lifted up her voice in household
affairs: she seemed, by her silence, to admit her own inadequacy in
culture and intellect, when topics of interest were being discussed,
only coming out now and then with defiant platitudes and
truisms--for almost defiantly she took the commonplace, vulgarian
point of view; yet after everything she would turn with her quiet,
triumphant assurance to James Houghton, and start on some point of
business, soft, assured, ascendant. The others shut their ears.

Now Miss Pinnegar had to get her footing slowly. She had to let
James run the gamut of his creations. Each Friday night new wonders,
robes and ladies' "suits"--the phrase was very new--garnished the
window of Houghton's shop. It was one of the sights of the place,
Houghton's window on Friday night. Young or old, no individual,
certainly no female left Woodhouse without spending an excited and
usually hilarious ten minutes on the pavement under the window.
Muffled shrieks of young damsels who had just got their first view,
guffaws of sympathetic youths, continued giggling and expostulation
and "Eh, but what price the umbrella skirt,