The party was still discussing this life which was hers and yet not hers when Miss Harriet, going her rounds, tapped at the door and entered. "Bedtime, young ladies, please," she said. "Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's compliments, and she hopes you have enjoyed yourselves." Her tone was that of one who might say: "You see, young ladies, what liberty you have _within_ the Rules; isn't it much pleasanter all round?" The party broke up. The weeks passed. In June a number of the girls went home, Earle among them. Permission to sleep out was given, a little earlier than usual on account of the heavy mildness of the nights; and Louie lay in the orchard, between Burnett Minor and little Pigou. The convolvulus came out, great white trumpets in the hedges; the sea over the hill became of a milky blue; and there floated out to it dense tracts of odours, lilies, and syringa, jasmine and roses and hay. You wearied of the smell of meadow-sweet; in the houses you could hardly take breath. The sun was reflected piercingly from their glass roofs, and the girls spent the afternoons in deck-chairs under the shadow of the courtyard yew. * * * * * The thing that (Louie sometimes told herself afterwards) made all the difference and yet (as she also sometimes told herself) made no difference at all, began very trivially. It was just such another accident as that which, nine or ten years before, had sent her to her mother with a demand to be told "who the Honourable Mrs. Causton was." Ordinarily, the girls at Chesson's were a little careless about the dressing of their hair. You cannot move constantly among banks of plants, and pick fruit, and net cherry-trees, and be for ever stooping over beds and frames, and keep your hair fit to be seen. Therefore, once a month or so, the girls might, if they wished, go in parties of four or five to a hairdresser's at Rainham, there to be professionally--whatever the word may be. These parties were made up more with a view to the enjoyment of the half-holiday than to the business strictly in hand; and Louie, had she cared, might have been a member of each detachment that went. On this particular day Louie had had much ado to free herself from Burnett Minor's affectionate clutch. "Oh, do come with our lot, Causton!" B. Minor had begged. "Oh, you are rotten! You know you went with Elwell before, and with Major before that, and I do want mine properly done like yours, not just punched up the way we do it!" "What, like Saint Catherine?" Louie laughed. "Do come." But Louie had shaken her off. "He'll remember how mine's done; I was there a week ago. No, I won't come. I'm going to do some theory this afternoon." "Oh, what a fib! You never do theory!" "Well, I ought to. No, I won't come." "Then will you lend me your bicycle?" "Yes, if you like; but the others are walking, aren't they?" "Well, I'll wobble with them."