e having to move into
smaller houses," said Miss Ethel; but she was touched all the same.

"I'm not sure my chair will stand in that corner," said Mrs. Bradford,
going back to her great preoccupation. "I must measure it. I do wish
I had it here."

"I can easily run and get the measurements," said Laura.

"You're sure it won't upset you," said Miss Panton. "You know you
ought to take care."

"Of course not," said Laura. "I'm nearly all right again."

But she stood facing the strong light which fell through the
uncurtained window, and her face looked very pale beneath the tan; it
had the queer bleached appearance which is observable in such
complexions even while the healthy brown and red still remain. There
were dark marks underneath her eyes, too, which accentuated the faint
lines near the mouth. Miss Ethel, glancing across at her was struck
for the first time by the fact that Laura was not a young girl any
more, though the effect of girlishness produced by her figure and the
poise of her head still remained.

Then she went away to measure the chair, while Miss Ethel wrote some
figures in a little book and remarked that she would now go up to the
front bedroom.

"Then I'll just stay where I am," said Mrs. Bradford. "There is
nothing for two to do, is there? And you know my legs, of course----"
She did not trouble to be more explicit, because her unusual garrulity
was dying down now Miss Panton and Laura had gone, and she knew Ethel
would be reasonable enough to understand that the legs of a married
lady could not be expected to go up and down stairs as easily as those
of a spinster.

Miss Ethel herself so belonged to the generation when a married woman
was necessarily on a different and higher level than an "old maid,"
that though she knew her sister in many ways to be a fool, she yet
bowed to the unassailable superiority of the widow. She really did
feel that the useless legs of her widowed sister were more worthy of
consideration than her own unwedded limbs as she trudged upstairs.

When she spread the measuring tape across the floor in front of the
window, her glance wandered for a moment to the house opposite where a
fat woman in an untidy blouse was standing in the doorway laughing and
talking with the milkman. A small child dragged a noisy cart along the
pavement, eating at the same time a large piece of Yorkshire pie. Then
a second woman opened the next door and joined the fun. They were al