“You ought not to watch me like that,” she said with a smile. “But it is the noise that is most bewildering. There are many places I will know already when I see them, many places and things I have known in pictures; but now the size of them, and the noise of carriages, and the people always passing, always different, always strangers, so that you never see the same people any more. But I am getting very much accustomed to it.” “You are trying very hard to get accustomed to it, any way, my good girl,” said her husband. “You need not be in a hurry; you may begin to regret some day that you have not a little of that feeling of wonder left,” said Ingram. “But you have not told me anything of what you think about London, and of how you like it, and how you like your house, and what you have done with Bras, and a thousand other things.” “I well tell you all that directly, when I have got for you some wine and some biscuits.” “Sheila, you can ring for them,” said her husband, but she had by that time departed on her mission. Presently she returned, and waited upon Ingram just as if she had been in her father’s house in Borva, with the gentlemen in a hurry to go out to the fishing, and herself the only one who could serve them. She put a small table close by the French window; she drew back the curtains as far as they would go, to show the sunshine of a bright forenoon in May lighting up the trees in the square and gleaming on the pale and tall fronts of the houses beyond; and she wheeled in three low easy-chairs, so as to front this comparatively cheerful prospect. Somehow or other, it seemed quite natural that Sheila should wheel in those chairs. It was certainly no disrespect on the part of either her husband or her visitor which caused both of them to sit still and give her her own way about such things. Indeed, Lavender had not as yet ever attempted to impress upon Sheila the necessity of cultivating the art of helplessness.