So the child taught the woman, who was learning rapidly that age is not measured by the years one has lived; Miss Gibb was a century older than she was, though she was only just in her teens. Two visits were paid to Mr. Thompson, each time with a petticoat. Nora lived on the proceeds of those two petticoats for nearly another month, during which all the members of the establishment were putting their heads together in endeavours to find her something to do. The heart-sickness it meant for her; the consciousness of wasted effort; the sense of shame; the realization of her own futility; she had aged more during the time she had been in Swan Street than in all the preceding years. She had long ceased to confine herself to attempts to find a post as secretary, or as clerk. She tramped half over London in her desire to answer, in person, advertisements of all sorts and kinds, always in vain. Any one but a sheer ignoramus--Miss Gibb's ignorance outside her own sphere of action was colossal--would have told her at a glance that her efforts were foredoomed to failure. And why? The idea of such a one as she was occupying some of the situations for which she applied was in itself an absurdity; her appearance, her bearing, her manners, her dress, all were against her; perhaps her dress handicapped her worst of all. She did not know it; she thought her frocks were as simple as they could be; and so they were, in the sense of the great costumier, with the simplicity which is the hall-mark of the dressmaker's art. There was not one of them which had not cost her ten or fifteen guineas. The would-be employer saw this at once, and decided that the applicant was unsuited, which she was; so Nora was sent sorrowing away. So with Nora the world went from bad to worse; until, as if to justify Miss Gibb's prophetic instinct, when things seemed really at their "tightest," help came to her from a quarter--as Angelina had foretold--from which she had least expected it. CHAPTER XX KING SOLOMON