"Actually, dear Miss Harding, I begin to feel as if I--I should like a new hat!" she said to me one day over tea. "Do you know the feeling? I think it is the best sign of convalescence a woman could have. For months, almost for years, I have not cared what I wore. Something to cover my head--that was all that was needed. To be always tired-- deadly, hopelessly tired--takes the spirit out of one." "No one should go on being too tired. It's very wrong to allow it." She looked at me; a long look, affectionate, grateful, reproachfully amused. "My dear, you live alone, and you have two maids. Evidently--excuse me--you have a comfortable income. My husband's business has been steadily falling off for the last two years. It is not his fault; he works like a horse; no man could have done more, but circumstances have been against him. We keep one maid, who washes, bakes, and cooks, while I tend the babies, make their clothes and my own, knit, and mend, and patch, and darn, take the children out, bathe them, put them to bed, attend to them through the night, do the housekeeping by day, and struggle over the bills when they are in bed. Bobby is three years and a half old, and has had bronchitis and measles. Baby is eleven months, and cuts her teeth with croup. Between them came the little one who died. And then you sit there and tell me I ought not to be tired!" "I beg your pardon. I'm sorry. I spoke without thinking. You are quite right--I know nothing about it. People who preach to others very often don't. Forgive me!" "Don't be so penitent! It is really almost a relief to meet a woman who _doesn't_ understand. All my friends are in pretty much the same case as myself, and they haven't got"--she stretched out her hand and timidly patted my arm--"my kind neighbour to help. Miss Harding, I think you must have been a fascinating girl!" "Oh, I was!" I said warmly, and then made haste to change the conversation. "What about that hat? I'm quite a good amateur milliner. Look out your oddments and let me see what I can do." CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. NEIGHBOURS--AND REAL WORK. The fame of me has gone abroad. I have been observed taking the Manners' infants in and out, and the result has been a simultaneous increase of interest, and--loss of prestige. Number 22, like Mrs Manners, pushes her own "pram," but there the resemblance ends. She is a healthy, full-blown young woman, smartly--and unsuitably--attired in the very latest fashion of Kensington High Street. She wears large artificial pearls round her neck, and wafts a strong odour of lily of the valley perfume. Never for the fraction of a second did it occur to me to offer to relieve _her_ of any of her duties; but she cast a pale-blue eye at me, and wove her own little schemes. One afternoon, as I was tucking the coverings round Baby Margaret's feet, she came up to my side, and said in an exceedingly casual manner:--