It was an odd thing, all the same, how easy it was to be friends with Lilith Gordon: though she did not belong to Laura's set though Laura did not even like her, and though she had had ample proof that Lilith was double-faced, not to be trusted. Yet, in the months that followed the affair of the purple dress, Laura grew more intimate with the plump, sandy-haired girl than with either Bertha, or Inez, or Tilly. Or, to put it more exactly, she was continually having lapses into intimacy, and repenting them when it was too late. In one way Lilith was responsible for this: she could make herself very pleasant when she chose, seem to be your friend through thick and thin, thus luring you on to unbosom yourself; and afterwards she would go away and laugh over what you had told her, with other girls. And Laura was peculiarly helpless under such circumstances: if it was done with tact, and with a certain assumed warmth of manner, anyone could make a cat's-paw of her. That Lilith and she undressed for bed together had also something to do with their intimacy: this half-hour when one's hair was unbound and replaited, and fat and thin arms wielded the brush, was the time of all others for confidences. The governess who occupied the fourth bed did not come upstairs till ten o'clock; the publican's daughter, a lazy girl, was usually half asleep before the other two had their clothes off. It was in the course of one of these confidential chats that Laura did a very foolish thing. In a moment of weakness, she gratuitously gave away the secret that Mother supported her family by the work of her hands. The two girls were sitting on the side of Lilith's bed. Laura had a day of mishaps behind her--that partly, no doubt, accounted for her self-indulgence. But, in addition, her companion had just told her, unasked, that she thought her "very pretty". It was not in Laura's nature to let this pass: she was never at ease under an obligation; she had to pay the coin back in kind. "Embroidery? What sort? However does she do it?"--Lilith's interest was on tiptoe at once--a false and slimy interest, the victim afterwards told herself. "Oh, my mother's awfully clever. It's just lovely, too, what she does--all in silk--and ever so many different colours. She made a piano-cover once, and got fifty pounds for it." "How perfectly splendid!" "But that was only a lucky chance ... that she got that to do. She mostly does children's dresses and cloaks and things like that." "But she's not a dressmaker, is she?" "A dressmaker? I should think not indeed! They're sent up, all ready to work, from the biggest shops in town." "I say!--she must be clever." "She is; she can do anything. She makes the patterns up all out of her own head. "--And filled with pride in Mother's accomplishments and Lilith's appreciation of them, Laura fell asleep that night without a qualm.