Eileen was wearing a white Jap silk skirt; a transparent rose pink blouse, that revealed the satin ribbon and lace camisole beneath; pink cotton open-work stockings; white shoes; one of those long stoles made of metallic-looking, lustre-brown fur, so beloved of the laundry girl; a big white hat, trimmed with the most violent of tangerine-coloured velvet, said velvet hanging in festoons down the back, and loops of it caught round the front and fastened to the fur stole—on one side with a large would-be-diamond lizard, about four inches long, and on the other with a crescent of similar make. Her hair, which was done in a wild imitation of the latest eccentricity of fashion, was radiant with more crescents and a sparkling three-tiered back comb. A string of large pearls adorned her neck. To say I was taken aback at the sight, is to put it mildly; I was fairly dumb with astonishment. Where in the world had that demure, mouse-like orphan been to pick up such ideas! Even though I knew she had gone to work in a munition factory, I wasn’t prepared for such developments. She soon enlightened us. After mutual polite inquiries about each other’s health, and a few more relative to the grandmother, she folded her hands in her lap, sat as though posing for a photograph, and then said: “And please, how do you think I look?” “You are certainly very bright,” I stammered, striving valiantly after truth. “Yes, I look very nice, don’t I?” she went on; “and I felt I ought to come round and show you, because, as I tell everybody, it’s all entirely due to _you_, ma’am, that I’m so stylish. I shouldn’t never have _thought_ to dress like this, if you hadn’t taught me how. And now I’m going round to show myself to Mrs. Griggles.” XII The Old Wood-House THE old wood-house stands on the lee-side of a belt of trees, part of the Squirrels’ Highway, as we call it, that runs down one side of the Flower-patch, sheltering it from the bleak north winds. Picture to yourself a building rather smaller than a very small church, built of great blocks of grey stone, with walls nearly two feet thick in places, a red-tiled pointed roof, a door at one end; and in case the walls should prove too flimsy to stand the winter gales, huge stone buttresses prop it up on the “off” side (i.e. the side where the ground goes on running downhill), lest the structure should take it into its head to run down-hill too! In place of a spire, above the door, a weathercock swings its arrow to the winds—at least, it would swing it on any well-conducted apex, but being merely mine it permanently points south. Not that it is particular where it points; all it asks is to be left in peace to close its eyes in meditative contemplation of the landscape. We occasionally get a ladder and then a long stick, and move it round, trying to urge it to deeds of derring-do, but it falls asleep the moment our ministrations cease.