much
that he could never drop a subject; still, it didn't wear as things _had_
worn, the worries of the early times of their great misery, her own, her
mother's and her elder sister's--the last of whom had succumbed to all
but absolute want when, as conscious and incredulous ladies, suddenly
bereft, betrayed, overwhelmed, they had slipped faster and faster down
the steep slope at the bottom of which she alone had rebounded. Her
mother had never rebounded any more at the bottom than on the way; had
only rumbled and grumbled down and down, making, in respect of caps,
topics and "habits," no effort whatever--which simply meant smelling much
of the time of whiskey.

CHAPTER II

It was always rather quiet at Cocker's while the contingent from Ladle's
and Thrupp's and all the other great places were at luncheon, or, as the
young men used vulgarly to say, while the animals were feeding. She had
forty minutes in advance of this to go home for her own dinner; and when
she came back and one of the young men took his turn there was often half
an hour during which she could pull out a bit of work or a book--a book
from the place where she borrowed novels, very greasy, in fine print and
all about fine folks, at a ha'penny a day. This sacred pause was one of
the numerous ways in which the establishment kept its finger on the pulse
of fashion and fell into the rhythm of the larger life. It had something
to do, one day, with the particular flare of importance of an arriving
customer, a lady whose meals were apparently irregular, yet whom she was
destined, she afterwards found, not to forget. The girl was blasee;
nothing could belong more, as she perfectly knew, to the intense
publicity of her profession; but she had a whimsical mind and wonderful
nerves; she was subject, in short, to sudden flickers of antipathy and
sympathy, red gleams in the grey, fitful needs to notice and to "care,"
odd caprices of curiosity. She had a friend who had invented a new
career for women--that of being in and out of people's houses to look
after the flowers. Mrs. Jordan had a manner of her own of sounding this
allusion; "the flowers," on her lips, were, in fantastic places, in happy
homes, as usual as the coals or the daily papers. She took charge of
them, at any rate, in all the rooms, at so much a month, and people were
quickly finding out what it was to make over this strange burden of the
pampered to the widow of a clergyman. The w