something on my forehead. I felt it against my chin. Giving my head a sudden shake it slipped off on to the pillow at my side. I sat up. It was broad day. I saw it as plain as could be. A little painted thing, tricked out in ridiculously contrasting shades of green, and pink, and yellow. As Miss Ashton had said, it might have been a toy. I had seen things not unlike it in the shop, among the Japanese and Chinese curiosities. Or it might have been a tiny representation of some preposterous heathen god, with beads for eyes. 

 CHAPTER IV. AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. SLAUGHTER. 

AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. SLAUGHTER.

 That was a curious day. More things happened on it than on any day of my life before. It was the beginning of everything and the end of some things. From morning to night there was continual movement like in the transformation scene in a pantomime. When, since one was born, nothing has taken place, and nothing changed, it makes such a difference. 

That

 I got up feeling dreadfully stale; an up-all-night sort of feeling. Not that I ever have been up all night; but I know what the sensation is like because of the descriptions I have read. Miss Ashton was disagreeable, and the girls were snappish—even Lucy Carr was short; and, I daresay, I was not too nice. But then there often is a little show of temper in the morning; it is human nature. They had all begun when I got down to breakfast, and, of course, I got black looks for that. I caught sight of Emily Purvis as I sat down. She nodded; but it struck me that she was not looking brilliant, any more than I was. 

 Breakfast stuck in my throat. The butter was bad as usual—cheap margarine just rank enough to make pastry taste. The bread seemed as if it had been cut for hours, it was so hard and dry. I did manage to swallow a mouthful of tea; but the water was smoked, and I do not like condensed milk which is just going off, so I could not do much even with that. On the whole I did not feel any better for the meal when I got into the shop. I am not sure that I did not feel worse; and I knew I should be sinking before dinner came. Mr. Broadley began at me at once. He set me re-packing a whole lot of stock, which he declared I had not put tidily away; which was perfectly untrue, because, as a matter of fact, it was Miss Nichols who had had it last, and it was she who had put it back again. And, anyhow, some of those trimmings, when they have been once shown, will not set neatly; they are like hats, they cannot be made to go 

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