He had a gentle, yet aspiring mind; Just, innocent, with varied learning fed. SHELLEY: _Prince Athanase_. Judith rose early the next morning and put the finishing touches to her embroidery. It was her mother’s birthday, and she had planned going to the Walterton Road after breakfast with her gift. But Rose claimed her for purposes of shopping, and the two girls set out together for the region of Westbourne Grove. It was a delicious autumn morning; Whiteley’s was thronged with familiar, sunburnt faces, and Greetings were exchanged on all sides. The Community had come back in a body from country and seaside, in time for the impending religious festivals; the feast of the New Year would be celebrated the next week, and the great fast, or Day of Atonement, some ten days later. “How glad every one is to get back,” cried Rose. “I know I hate the country; so do most people, only it isn’t the fashion to say so.” And she nodded in passing to Adelaide, who, with her gloves off, was intently comparing the respective merits of some dress lengths in brocaded velvet. Judith smiled rather dreamily, and remarked that they had better go first to the glove-department, that for the sale of dress-materials, for which they were bound, being so hopelessly overcrowded. “Very well,” cried Rose. Then, in an undertone: “Look the other way; there’s Netta Sachs. What a howling cad!” as a bouncing, gaily attired daughter of Shem passed them in the throng. Rose was in her element; she was an excellent shopping-woman, loving a bargain for its own sake, grudging no time to the matching of colours and such patience-trying operations, going through the business from beginning to end with a wholehearted enjoyment that was good to see. Judith, who had all a pretty girl’s interest in dress, and was generally willing enough for such expeditions, followed her cousin from counter to counter, with a little amiable air of abstraction. Was there some magic in the autumn morning, some intoxication in the hazy, gold-coloured air, that she, the practical, sensible Judith, went about like a hashish-eater under the first delightful influence of the dangerous drug? “What a crowd!” ejaculated Adelaide, coming up to them as she turned from the contemplation of some cheap ribbons in a basket. She had, to the full, the gregarious instincts of her race, and Whiteley’s was her happy hunting-ground. Here, on this neutral territory, where Bayswater nodded to Maida Vale, and South Kensington took Bayswater by the hand, here could her boundless curiosity be gratified, here could her love of gossip have free play. “We are going to get some lunch,” said Rose, moving off; “Judith has to go and see her people.” She, too, loved the social aspects of the place no less than its business ones. Her pale, prominent, sleepy eyes, under their heavy white lids, saw quite as much and as quickly as Adelaide’s dancing, glittering, hard little organs of vision.