frocks
because her intelligence had not kept pace with her age.

"The poor little thing talks like a child," Mrs. Dale would explain. "So
I dresses her like a child. It's less noticeable."

"_Which_ is silly," Jenny used to comment. "Because she's as tall as a
house and _everybody_ turns round to look after her."

Jenny would scarcely have tolerated this family for a week, if she had
been brought at all closely or frequently in contact with them; but so
much of the day was spent with Maurice and all the evening at the
theater that Stacpole Terrace implied little beyond breakfast in bed and
bed itself. Sometimes, indeed, when she went home to tea at Hagworth
Street and saw the brightness of the glass and shimmer of clean
crockery, she was on the verge of sinking her pride in a practical
reconciliation. Nine weeks passed, however, making it more difficult
every day to admit herself in the wrong; although, during the absence of
Maurice, it became a great temptation. Therefore, when this letter
arrived from Spain, inviting her to widen the breach with her family,
she was half inclined to play with the idea of absolute severance.
Flight, swift and sudden, appealed to her until the difficulty of making
arrangements began to obscure other considerations. The thought of
packing, of catching trains and steamers, of not knowing exactly what
frocks to buy, oppressed her; then a fear took hold of her fancy lest,
something happening to Maurice, she might find herself alone in a
foreign city; and at the end of it all there was her childhood in a
vista of time, her childhood with the presence of her mother brooding
over it, her mother dearly loved whatever old-fashioned notions she
preserved of obedience and strictness of behavior. It would be mean to
outrage, as she knew she would, her mother's pride, and to hand her over
to the criticisms of a mob of relatives. It would be mean to desert May,
who even now might be crying on a solitary pillow. But when she went
downstairs dressed and saw the Dale family in morning deshabille,
uncorseted, flabby and heavy-eyed, crouching over the parlor fire, and
when she thought of Maurice and the empty studio, Jenny's resolution was
shaken and she was inclined to renounce every duty, face every
difficulty and leave her world behind.

"You do look a sulky thing," said Irene. "Coming to sit round the fire?"

"No, thanks," said Jenny. "I haven't got the time."

"Your young chap's away, isn't he?"