Pots being sided, she was taken for a swift peep into Mrs. Cann’s; only the veriest peep, however, because time was getting on, as even Mrs. Clapham, as time-lost as any creature bewitched by the fairies, realised in flashes. But she was aware that the event would not be properly rounded off without that peep, just as it demanded a visit to old Mrs. Bendrigg. So in spite of her aching back and her stiff legs, she went cheerfully from point to point, expressing an admiration sufficiently tempered with judgment not to give the effect of fulsome praise, and climbed her last flight of stairs—unwillingly and with difficulty—to face the final ordeal of introduction. Mrs. Bendrigg, half sitting up in bed, night-capped, jacketed, wrinkled and very old, looked up at the fine figure almost swamping the little bedroom with still-keen eyes full of satisfaction. She had never been able to get as much work as she wanted out of her other neighbours—“a poor, shiftless lot!”—but there looked a lot of excellent, skilled work to be got out of Mrs. Clapham! The latter returned the gaze of this last of her new acquaintances with a feeling that was half pity and half repulsion. She was fond of old people, as a rule, and was always ready to do them service; but in old Mrs. Bendrigg she now realised that she saw the typical almshouse figure. The others, together with herself, were sufficiently young and able-bodied to find some interest in life, sufficient work to keep up their self-respect, sufficient movement to keep them from mouldering. But she now saw that it was for such as old Mrs. Bendrigg that almshouses were really built, broken old folk on the verge of passing away. The vision that had come to her on the day she had lost heart returned to her now with such force that she nearly broke down again. Such as old Mrs. Bendrigg she, too, would eventually become, dependent on half-willing neighbours who were neither kith nor kin. That was what almshouses really meant, when you thought it out; that was the real meaning of the House of Dreams. She stood at the end of the bed, looking down at the night-capped figure with a thoughtful eye, and for the time being felt the gift of old Mr. T. close in upon her with prison-walls.