she lives in Tudor Street with a daughter one never sees—something wrong in her head, and has fits—she sent me a cross of lilies, white lilac, and stephanotis, as handsome as you could wish; and a card—I forget what was on the card. . . . Julia, when you died——

    julia. Oh, don't Laura!

    laura. Well, you did die, didn't you?

    julia. Here one doesn't talk of it. That's over. There are things you will have to learn.

    laura. What I was going to say was—when I died I found my sight was much better. I could read all the cards without my glasses. Do you use glasses?

    julia. Sometimes, for association. I have these of our dear Mother's in her tortoise-shell case.

    laura. That reminds me. Where is our Mother?

    julia. She comes—sometimes.

    laura. Why isn't she here always?

    julia (with pained sweetness). I don't know, Laura. I never ask questions.

    laura. Really, Julia, I shall be afraid to open my mouth presently!

    julia (long-suffering still). When you see her you will understand. I told her you were coming, so I daresay she will look in.

    laura. 'Look in'!

    julia. Perhaps. That is her chair, you remember. She always sits there, still.

(Enter Hannah with the coal.)

Just a little on, please, Hannah—only a little.

    laura. This isn't China tea: it's Indian, three and sixpenny.

    julia. Mine is ten shilling China.

    laura. Lor', Julia! How are you able to afford it?

    julia. A little imagination goes a long way here, you'll find. Once I tasted it. So now I can always taste it.

    laura. Well! I wish I'd known.

    julia. Now you do.

    laura. But I never tasted tea at more than three-and-six. Had I known, I could have got two ounces of the very best, and had it when——

    julia. A lost opportunity. Life is full of them.

    laura. Then you mean to tell me that if I had indulged more then, I could indulge more now?

    julia. Undoubtedly. As I never knew what it was to wear sables, I have to be content with ermine.

    laura. Lor', Julia, how paltry!

(While this conversation has been going on, a gentle old lady has appeared upon the scene, unnoticed and unannounced. One perceives, that is to say, that the high-backed arm-chair beside the fire, sheltered by a screen from all possibility of draughts, has an occupant. Dress and appearance show a doubly septuagenarian character: at the age of seventy, which in this place she retains as the hall-mark of her earthly pilgrimage, she belongs also to the 'seventies' of the last century, wears watered silk, and retains under her cap a shortened and stiffer version of the side-curls with which she and all 'the sex' captivated the hearts of Charles Dickens and other novelists in their early youth. She has soft and indeterminate features, and when she speaks her voice, a little shaken by the quaver of age, is soft and indeterminate also. Gentle and lovable, you will be surprised to discover that she, also, has a will of her own; but for the present this does not show. From the dimly illumined corner behind the lamp her voice comes soothingly to break the discussion.)

    old lady. My dear, would you move the light a little nearer? I've dropped a stitch.

    laura (starting up). Why, Mother dear, when did you come in?

    julia (interposing with arresting hand). Don't! You mustn't try to touch her, or she goes.

    laura. Goes?

    julia. I can't explain. She is not quite herself. She doesn't always hear what one says.

    laura (assertively). She can hear me. (To prove it, she raises her voice defiantly.) Can't you, Mother?

    mrs. r. (the voice perhaps reminding her). Jane, dear, I wonder what's become of Laura, little Laura: she was always so naughty and difficult to manage, so different from Martha—and the rest.

    laura. Lor', Julia! Is it as bad as that? Mother, 'little Laura' is here, sitting in front of you. Don't you know me?

    mrs. r. Do you remember, Jane, one day when we'd all started for a walk, Laura had forgotten to bring her gloves, and I sent her back for them? And on the way she met little Dorothy Jones, and she took her gloves off her, and came back with them just as if they were her own.

    laura. What a good memory you have, Mother! I remember it too. She was an odious little thing, that Dorothy—always so whiney-piney.

    julia. More tea, Laura?

(Laura pushes her cup at her without remark, for she has been kept waiting; then, in loud tones, to suit the one whom she presumes to be rather deaf:)

    laura. Mother! Where are you living now?

    mrs. r. I'm living, my dear.

    laura. I said 'where?'

    julia. We live where it suits us, Laura.

    laura. Julia, I wasn't addressing myself to you. Mother, where are you living? . . . Why, where has she gone to?

(For now we perceive that this gentle Old Lady so devious in her conversation has a power of self-possession, of which, very retiringly, she avails herself.)

    julia (improving the occasion, as she hands back the cup, with that touch of superiority so exasperating to a near relative). Now you see! If you press her too much, she goes. . . . You'll have to accommodate yourself, Laura.

    laura (imposing her own explanation). I think you gave me green tea, Julia . . . or have had it yourself.

    julia (knowing better). The dear Mother seldom stays long, except when she finds me alone.

(Having insinuated this barb into the flesh of her 'dear sister,' she takes up her crochet with an air of great contentment. Mrs. James, meanwhile, to make herself more at home, now that tea is finished, undoes her bonnet-strings with a tug, and lets them hang. She is not in the best of tempers.)

    laura. I don't believe she recognised me. Why did she keep on calling me 'Jane'?

    julia. She took you for poor Aunt Jane,