Next day Sylvia watched Amelia put on the plumage of departure and leave with her yellow tin trunk; then she set to work to help Mrs. Meares make the beds of Mr. Leslie Warburton, the actor; Mr. Croasdale, the minister; and Mr. Witherwick, the clerk. Her companion's share was entirely verbal and she disliked the task immensely. When the beds were finished, she made an attempt with Mrs. Meares to put away the clean linen, but Mrs. Meares went off in the middle to find the words of a poem she could not remember, leaving behind her towels to mark her passage as boys in paper-chases strew paper on Hampstead Heath. She did not find the words of the poem, or, if she did, she had forgotten them when Sylvia discovered her; but she had decided to alter the arrangement of the drawing-room curtains, so that to the unassorted unburied linen were added long strips of faded green silk which hung about the house for some days. Mrs. Meares asked Sylvia if she would like to try her hand at an omelette; the result was a failure, whether on account of the butter or the eggs was not quite certain; the cat to which it was given was sick. The three lodgers made no impression on Sylvia. Each of them in turn tried to kiss her when she first went into his room; each of them afterward complained bitterly of the way the eggs were poached at breakfast and asked Mrs. Meares why she had got rid of Amelia. Gradually Sylvia found that she was working as hard as Clara used to work, that slowly and gently she was being smothered by Mrs. Meares, and that the process was regarded by Mrs. Meares as an act of holy charity, to which she frequently alluded in a very superior way. Early one afternoon at the end of April Sylvia went out shopping for Mrs. Meares, which was not such a simple matter, because a good deal of persuasiveness had to be used nowadays with the tradesmen on account of unpaid books. As she passed the entrance to the Earl's Court Exhibition she saw Mabel Bannerman coming out; though she had hated Mabel and had always blamed her for her father's death, past enmity fled away in the pleasure of seeing somebody who belonged to a life that only a month of Mrs. Meares had wonderfully enchanted. She called after her; Mabel, only slightly more flaccid nowadays, welcomed her without hesitation. "Why, if it isn't Sylvia! Well, I declare! You are a stranger." They talked for a while on the pavement, until Mabel, who disliked such publicity except in a love-affair, and who was frankly eager for a full account of what had happened after she left Swanage, invited Sylvia to "have one" at the public house to which her father in the old days used to invite Jimmy, and where once he had been surprised by Sylvia's arrival with his friend. Mabel was shocked to think that Henry had perhaps died on her account, but she assured Sylvia that for any wrong she had done him she had paid ten times over in the life she had led with the other man.