This change was not for the better so far as Joan was concerned, for Mrs. Ogden had become abnormally pervading in her bedroom since her husband's death. During his lifetime he had been the one to dominate this apartment as he had dominated the rest of the house; but now that James was corporeally absent there remained only his memory, which took up very little room; all the rest of the space was purely Mrs. Ogden, and she filled it to overflowing. Joan did not realize to what an extent her mother had spread until they came to share a room. There was literally not an available inch for her things anywhere. The drawers were full, the cupboards were full; on the washstand was a fearsome array of medicine bottles which, together with a quantity of unneeded trifles, overflowed on to the dressing-table. And what was so disheartening was that Mrs. Ogden seemed incapable of making the necessary adjustments. She was far from resenting Joan's invasion; on the contrary, she liked having her daughter to sleep with her, and yet each new suggestion that necessitated the scrapping or the putting away of some of the odds and ends was met with resistance. "Oh! not that, darling; that was given to me when I was a girl in India"; or, "Joan, please don't move that lacquer box; I thought you knew that it came from the drawing-room at Chesham." Her years of widowhood had developed the acquisitive instinct in Mrs. Ogden, who was fast becoming that terrible problem, the hoarder in the small house. With no husband to ridicule her or protest, she was able to indulge her mania for treasuring useless things. Joan discovered that the shelves were full of them. Little empty bottles, boxes of various size and shape, worn out hair-brushes, discarded garments, and even threadbare bedroom slippers, all neatly wrapped up and put away against some mythical day when they might be wanted, and all taking up an incredible amount of space. In the end she decided that she would have to let her own possessions remain where they were, in Milly's room. Far more oppressive than lack of room, however, was the consciousness of a continual presence. It seemed to Joan that her mother had begun to haunt their bedroom. It was not only the exasperating performance of communal dressing and undressing, but she was never able to have the room to herself, even during the day; if she went upstairs for a few minutes' solitude, her mother was sure to follow her, on some pretext or another.