The smoking of the chimney had blackened the ceiling, which bellied downwards in the middle like the under side of a giant's mattress; and it had also dimmed the surfaces of such of the brighter objects of furniture as the cheap working-room contained--the picture-glasses, the gate-legged table, a bowl full of dead daffodils, and some crockery. But Miss Lennard and Miss Towers frequently said that it was not for the inside of the room, but for the sake of the views from the long lattice in front, that they had chosen the place. These were for ever changing and charming. From a standpoint just within the door you looked over the Embankment Gardens and saw, through trees, lighters following the bullying tugs, or barges, their sails reefed to the sprits, resembling tall attenuated figures in the act of grasping punting-poles. Placing yourself in the middle of the worn floor you saw, crossed out as it were by the middle lattice, the Chelsea Jelly Factory and other buildings across the river. And standing quite by the fireplace you saw the lacy lines of the Suspension Bridge and the low grey-green trees of Battersea Park. As the chimney emitted more yellow curds, Miss Lennard, with an "Ugh!" opened the middle section of this window. The papers among which she had been searching were instantly whisked across the floor. "Bother the thing!" she muttered. "How stupid if it's at Oxford Street all the time!... I say, Amory, have you seen that Doubleday thing? You know--the Chemisettes. I was sure I'd left it here." The door had rattled again, and Miss Amory Towers had entered. Miss Towers did not answer at once. From a brown pudding-bowl of a hat with a silken cord round it, she drew out two enamel-headed hatpins, and hung the hat on a hook. Its removal showed her rich hair no longer in a plait, but wreathed round and round her head and interplaited until it resembled a vividly painted fir cone. She wore a peacock's-neck-coloured blouse with several necklaces of iridescent shells at the collar; a roughened leather belt encircled the waist that would have been large had she herself not been so small; and, while the breeze from the open window rippled in Dorothy's tea-coloured raincoat, it hardly stirred the folds of Amory's heavier skirt of dusty-looking brown velvet. She moved to the window. "I haven't touched your things," she said. Then she stood, half leaning against the embrasure, gazing moodily across the river.