She knew she could not let Julia know how she enjoyed washing her hands, in several soapings, in the cold water, before dinner. They would go their favourite midday walk, down the long avenue in the park through the little windings of the shrubbery and into the chrysanthemum show, strolling about in the large green-house, all the girls glad of the escape from a set walk, reading over every day the strange names on the little wooden stakes, jokes and gigglings and tiresomenesses all kept within bounds by the happiness that there was, inside the great quiet steamy glass-house, in the strange raw bitter scent of the great flowers, in the strange huge way they stood, and with all their differences of shape and colour staring quietly at you, all in the same way with one expression. They were startling, amongst their grey leaves; and they looked startled and held their heads as if they knew they were beautiful. The girls always hurried to get to the chrysanthemums and came away all of them walking in twos relieved and happy back through the cold park to dinner. But Julia, who loved the flowers, though she made fun of their names in certain moods and dropped them _sotto voce_ into the general conversation at the dinner-table would have, Miriam felt sure, scorned her own feeling of satisfaction in the great hand-washing and the good dinner. And she detested pease pudding with the meat, and boiled suet pudding with treacle. 9 She ate scarcely anything herself, keeping her attention free and always seeming to be waiting for someone to say something that was never said. Her broad-shouldered, curiously buoyant, heavy, lounging, ill-clad form, her thick white skin, her eyes like a grey-blue sea, her dark masses of fine hair had long been for Miriam the deepest nook in the meal-time gatherings--she rested there unafraid of anything the boarders might say or do. She would never be implicated. Julia would take care of that, heading everything off and melting up the difficulties into some absurdity that would set all the Pernes talking. Julia lounged easily there, controlling the atmosphere of the table. And the Pernes knew it unconsciously, they must know it; any English person would know it ... though they talked about her untidiness and lack of purpose and application. Julia was a deep, deep nook, full of thorns. 10