A brass plate engraved ‘Pouchée’ was on the front door, conferring a semi-professional character upon the mouldering household. Although the fencing-master, honest man, had lain for twenty years in Père la Chaise, and Madame Pouchée had no more ostensible livelihood than such small sums as Mademoiselle gained by the teaching of her language, their plate raised them to the plane of citizens. The mother and daughter formed units in that curious gathering of poor French people which exists in our University towns, decayed families of fencing-masters, hair-dressers, or cooks, once prosperous, who shiver through English fog and cold to the end of their existence because they are ‘dans leurs meubles,’ ratepayers! To quit her dark old home, to forego the sound of Great St. Mary’s curfew, to submit her furniture to the hammer of the auctioneer, would, to Madame Pouchée, have seemed little short of sacrilege. She passed her life with no larger pleasure than knitting, no acuter pain than rheumatism. She could go to Mass on Sundays and festivals with more security in Cambridge than in France. Pouchée’s foils and masks were suspended in the raftered entrance hall. Pouchée’s portrait, as a glossy bachelor of twenty, with black frock coat, turn-down collar, and gamboge gloves, hung in the salon. Upstairs, in one of the low-ceiled attics, were her crucifix and bénitier, just as she brought them from far Provence before her first child saw the light. Such things to an aged woman are more than climate, more than nationality. Madame Pouchée’s lot had not been rose-coloured during the fencing-master’s life. At the time of his death, even, Monsieur was in Paris, led thither by some of the unexplained affairs which perennially drew him from his own fireside. But his widow clung to the foils and masks and portrait with as much patient fidelity as though he had loved her always. The careless husband who lay in Père la Chaise belonged to Madame Pouchée’s middle age. The foils, the masks, the glossy bachelor with gamboge gloves and turn-down collar, were relics of her youth. Every corner of the house was burnished to that vanishing point of cleanliness which only French housewives understand, on the evening of November 15. Ere Marjorie had well alighted from her cab, an unforgotten figure rushed forth through wet and darkness to meet her, a pair of kind solid arms held her fast. ‘But you are tall--but you are fresh and vermeille!’ Mademoiselle Pouchée hurried the girl across the strip of pavement to the house. ‘I see no more the little Cendrillon of old days. Come, then, mère, leave thy kitchen. Come, that I may present thee to our future Girton girl.’