"My dear girl," she would call over her shoulder to Jane, "I know this is awfully tiresome to you, and it must be very painful to see your old friend suffering so; but if you will just wait patiently for ten or fifteen minutes more--" "Oh, don't mind me," Jane would respond, outwardly bored, but inwardly interested. "I'm getting along all right. Go on enjoying your sufferings as long as you please." And after a few of these forenoons Jane had realized her own imperfections, and had learned the means of getting round them. Then Mrs. Bates would convey her unconscious pupil to the hair-dresser's. She would abandon her gray tresses to the manipulations of operatives skilled to show the possibilities of the natural material and the magical supplementary powers of the unnatural; every frown occasioned by a tug, every tear produced by a tangle, was borne cheerfully for the sake of an ultimate good, and Jane acquired indirectly a complete knowledge of all those preparations and processes which her preceptress felt her needs required. "Yes, my hair _is_ thinning on the forehead," Mrs. Bates would admit. "If you should happen to have the precise match...." The match was always difficult, but Jane did not fail to observe how easy the same would be for herself. Then Mrs. Bates would have her manicure at the house twice as often as before, to increase the chance of her being on hand some morning when Jane should drop in. "Try it yourself--just to see what it's like," she would suggest; and her own plump and shapely hands would yield their place on the small red velvet cushion to the long and graceless fingers of her protégée. And presently the other processes--the soakings, the washings, the rubbings--would follow. She also recommended exercise--dumb-bells, for example. "What's the matter with fencing?" asked Jane. "Truesdale, you know; he's awfully good to me." She might have found it difficult to cite any definite example of Truesdale's goodness; perhaps she meant merely that he never snubbed her, never hectored her. "Better yet. Fencing by all means." Jane, moreover, always accompanied Mrs. Bates to the milliner's and to the dress-maker's. They priced things, debated things, and tried on things--on themselves, on each other, on the attendants. Mrs. Bates purchased lavishly for herself, and suggested lavishly in regard to purchases by Jane. "You'd better have this," she would say. "It becomes you first-rate--you won't find anything nicer." "But the price!" Jane would demur. For Mrs. Bates frequented the most expensive places, and spent money with a prodigal recklessness. "I can't; it isn't right; I couldn't think of costing poor pa so much--especially with Rosy and everything making such an expense for him." "Nonsense. You're entitled to some of the good things of life, too. Your father can stand it, I should hope. If he hasn't learned how to spend money, it's high time he did. Have you any idea, you poor, simple soul, what's he worth?"