But this morning Dorothy was making a cake, and Norah was able to linger affectionately over the shampoo, safe from her jealous sneers. When she had dried away with a towel enough of the unbecoming lankness she went over to the open window to recapture from the rich September sun the gold that should flash among her fawn-soft hair. Down below among the laurels and privets of the front garden her two youngest sisters were engaged upon some grubby and laborious task which, though they looked like two fat white rabbits, did not involve, so far as Norah could see, without leaning out of the window, any actual burrowing; and she was much too pleasantly occupied with her own thoughts to take the risk of having to interfere. She had propped against the frame of the wide-open window a looking-glass in which she was admiring herself; but the mirror was not enough, and she often glanced over with a toss of her head to the houses opposite, whence the retired colonel in No. 18 or the young heir of No. 16 might perhaps be able to admire her, too. But Norah was not only occupied in contemplating the beauty of her light-brown hair; she was equally engaged with her heart's desire. For the ninth time in two years she was deep in love, this time so deep indeed that she was trying to bring her mind to bear seriously upon the future and the problem of convincing her father that the affection she had for Wilfred Curlew was something far beyond the capacity of a schoolgirl presented itself anew for urgent solution. Yesterday, when her suitor had joined the family in the dining-room after supper, her father had looked at him with an expression of most discouraging surprise; if he should visit them again to-night, as he probably would, her father might pass from discouraging glances to disagreeable remarks, and might even attempt, when Wilfred was gone, to declare positively that he visited Lonsdale Road too often. Intolerable though it was that she at eighteen should still be exposed to the caprice of paternal taboos, it was obvious that until she made the effort to cut herself free from these antiquated leading-strings she should remain in subjection.