it, or else you might not feel the benefit of
it when you go out, Isabella," she observed, for she was not one to miss
an opportunity of making a remark of this kind. "And _do_ look on the
bright side. I always say that things of this sort may not be true, and
even if they are, everything may be for the best in the end."

Mrs. Wyburn liked to excite Millie's interest, and yet somehow loathed
her sympathy.

"Yes; do you know, I really _should_ have the ceiling painted, if I were
you," she said, as if it were a new idea. "Otherwise your house is
looking so nice--quite charming. I think it such an excellent plan not
to have flowers in the windows, only ever-greens."

"So glad you think so. It _is_ rather a good arrangement, because, you
see, they always look exactly the same all the year round."

"That they certainly do--and nevergreens would be a better name for
them," spitefully said Mrs. Wyburn to herself as she drove off.

"What a tiresome mood Isabella was in to-day," said Miss Westbury to
herself. "I must go and see Jane Totness and tell her what she said....
Ceiling, indeed! She _was_ nasty!"

CHAPTER XX

A PROPOSAL

Miss Luscombe was looking out of the window, looking up to the street,
waiting. At last she saw from her basement (the "tank," as her friends
called it) a glimpse on the pavement of a pair of feet that she knew.
They were the feet of Mr. John Ryland Rathbone. She hastened to prepare
herself for his visit.

It is obvious that people who live in a basement must look at life from
a different point of view from all others. The proudest of women in that
position must necessarily see it _de bas en haut_. The woman looking out
of the drawing-room or higher for the person she is expecting to see
gets more or less of a bird's-eye view. She sees the top of a hat first,
and the person necessarily foreshortened. From the dining-room or
ground-floor window she sees the approaching visitor through glass, but
practically on a level, almost face to face, and therefore is incapable
of judging him on the whole or of taking a very large view, since any
object placed close to the eye deprives one of a sense of
proportion--shuts out everything else. But from a basement window things
are very different. It is wonderful how much character one learns to see
in feet, and it is still more curious how, to the accustomed eye, their
expression can vary from time to time. Flora saw at a glance by the
obstinate sta