"I suppose," she said, deliberately paraphrasing a favourite remark of Miss Stukely’s, "we can all be workers, ’you in your small corner; I in mine.’" "Quite so," Mr. Wycherly assented politely, though he in his turn was somewhat staggered by Jane-Anne’s gently patronising tone. Had the Greek nymph of the afternoon turned into an amazing little prig in the evening? It was evident that this child was a quick-change artist in more than the matter of make-up. As for Jane-Anne, she felt curiously flattened out. This courteous, kindly old gentleman made her feel incredibly small. Bruey, she was certain, or even the apostolic Miss Stukely herself, would find it exceedingly difficult to approach Mr. Wycherly on the subject of his soul. And then and there was lighted in the youthful mind of Jane-Anne one little candle of common-sense which illuminated this dark and difficult situation with the bright suggestion that possibly Mr. Wycherly’s soul was Mr. Wycherly’s business and not hers; and just at that very crucial moment she heard him saying: "By the way, child, isn’t that dress rather hot and heavy for this summer weather? Don’t you think we’d better see about something else if you’ve not got anything thinner?" She jumped to her feet, clasping and unclasping her hands in an agony of earnestness. Where frocks were concerned souls had a poor chance with Jane-Anne. "Oh, sir," she cried, "it’s a hateful old dress, but my two cotton frocks were left at the Bainbridge and aunt said we couldn’t ask for them as I’d left, and they said I could keep this and my best, as I’d got them with me, but I wish they hadn’t. Mightn’t some poorer child than me have this? It is so hideous and uncomfortable." She had come close up to Mr. Wycherly and was pleading as though her very life depended on it. Mr. Wycherly drew her between his knees, and there was a look of considerable amusement on his handsome old face as he asked: "If it is so ugly and so uncomfortable, why should you want to bestow it upon anybody else?" "But it’s quite good," Jane-Anne expostulated; "we couldn’t throw it away. Some child might be glad of it. I’m not. Let’s talk about what I shall have," she added coaxingly, and somehow she found herself sitting on Mr. Wycherly’s knee. It was years since she had sat on anybody’s knee, and that she should do so again and in such circumstances seemed to her inconceivably delightful. Jane-Anne expanded like a flower. It did not seem such an extraordinary thing to Mr. Wycherly that a child should sit on his knee. He had served a long and somewhat severe apprenticeship to Montagu and Edmund, who both had generally elected to sit upon him at the same time. What most impressed him about Jane-Anne was that she was distressingly light. They had a long and intimate confabulation on the subject of frocks, finally deciding that, with Mrs. Dew’s permission, Mrs. Methuen should be taken into their counsels. The clock struck nine.