She had been feeling a little scared of this new boarding-house. She felt grateful for this girl’s unaffected overture.

“Mine’s the best room in the house,” Miss Mason informed her. She pushed open the door of a room immediately below Esther’s. “Sit down and make yourself at home. I’ll get the tea in half a minute. I know you’ll have another cup. I shall, anyway. Do you smoke?”

“No,” said Esther.

“Well I do. I hope you’re not shocked. I find it’s so soothing when you’ve got nerves; and I’m a frightfully nervy person. I am hardly ever still; I’m always on the go.”

Esther could well believe it. She looked on with a slightly dazed feeling while June Mason lit a cigarette and bustled about the room.

It was a very comfortable room, with plenty of easy-chairs and lots of cushions all in the same pale shade of mauve.

“I didn’t think there would be any rooms as comfortable as this in the house,” Esther said. “I suppose you pay a great deal for it, though.”

“I don’t know about that. Most of the furniture is mine and all the cushions. Do you like my cushions?”

She put down the teapot, which she had been about to fill, and caught up one of the cushions, plumping its softness together with her white hands.

46

“Mauve is my lucky colour,” she rattled on. “Everything I do in mauve turns out well. But perhaps you don’t believe in a superstition like that?”

Esther was rather bewildered.

“I’m not sure. I never thought about it,” she said hesitatingly. “But it’s a very pretty colour.”

Miss Mason dropped the cushion to the floor, and stooping picked Charlie up and deposited him on it.

“Doesn’t he look sweet?” she demanded. “And a black cat is lucky too, you know, so that’s a comfort.”

She went back to the teapot, made the tea, and poured out a cup for Esther.

“Is that chair comfy?––yes, lean back! What are you looking at? Oh, my photographs! Yes. I have got a lot, haven’t I? Lydia dusts 

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