She stood in front of her looking-glass that evening and, with hands that trembled with excitement, applied the "Magnolia Bloom" to her little brown face. It never occurred to Jane-Anne that the way to use powder was to put it on and take it off again. That would have appeared to her a wasteful work of supererogation. She liberally bedaubed her face with the "snow-white" powder and anxiously regarded the result. Her eyes looked very dark and large, and her eyebrows, what she had left of them, very black. It had rather an ageing effect on the whole, for so liberal had she been with the powder that her hair all round the temples was iron grey. She was not quite sure whether she liked the effect or not. Even to her own prejudiced eyes it was a trifle _bizarre_ and pronounced. Where was the soft sheen of the butterfly’s wing promised to "Amabelle"? "Perhaps it looks different to other people," she reflected. She crept to the foot of the stairs and listened. Yes, her aunt was safely in the kitchen. She darted through the housekeeper’s room and upstairs to Mr. Wycherly’s door, and went in. He looked up from the letter he was writing with his usual kindly smile of welcome, then suddenly he laughed. "My dear Jane-Anne," he exclaimed, "have you been baking?" Jane-Anne stood still in the middle of the room and hung her head. "It’s Magnolia Bloom," she mumbled. "It’s what?" Mr. Wycherly demanded. "Magnolia Bloom," she repeated, her cheeks very hot indeed beneath the powder. "Is that some new kind of flour?" asked Mr. Wycherly, "and if so why in the world do you not wash your face?" "It’s not flour, sir, it’s powder—face powder—to make one white and pretty? Don’t you like it?" Mr. Wycherly sat back in his chair gazing in speechless wonder at Jane-Anne. That a girl who admired Lord Byron’s poetry, who could learn the Greek alphabet in two evenings, who showed a real appreciation of what was noble and uplifting in the history of her country, could make such an absolute guy of herself in all good faith was to him quite incomprehensible. Boys did not do these things. He was fairly nonplussed. "Where did you get this—ahem—bloom?" he asked quietly. "I bought it, sir, with that eighteenpence." "Have you much more of it?" "Oh, yes, sir, a whole box." "Please bring it, and you shall similarly adorn me and see how I look." Jane-Anne was puzzled. He certainly had not admired her, but then, again, he had not condemned, and he wanted some himself. Swiftly and softly as a panther (lest she should meet her aunt) she fetched the powder and the screw of cotton wool from her room. "Now," said Mr. Wycherly, "do me." Jane-Anne made a dreadful mess. All over his coat, his chair (even the writing-table did not escape), fell the "Magnolia Bloom." "What a very disagreeable smell the stuff has got," said Mr. Wycherly, and sneezed. He hated common scents.