‘Ay, ay.’ He considers. ‘Do you think you could give your face less of a homely look?’
‘I’m sure I could.’
‘Then you can have a try. But, mind you, I promise nothing. All will depend on the effect.’
He goes into the pantry, and the old lady is left alone. Not alone, for she is ringed round by entrancing hopes and dreadful fears. They beam on her and jeer at her, they pull her this way and that; with difficulty she breaks through them and rushes to her pail, hot water, soap, and a looking-glass. Our last glimpse of her for this evening shows her staring (not discontentedly) at her soft old face, licking her palm, and pressing it to her hair. Her eyes are sparkling.
One evening a few days later Mrs. Twymley and Mrs. Mickleham are in Mrs. Dowey’s house, awaiting that lady’s return from some fashionable dissipation. They have undoubtedly been discussing the war, for the first words we catch are:
MRS. MICKLEHAM. ‘I tell you flat, Amelia, I bows no knee to junkerdom.’
MRS. TWYMLEY. ‘Sitting here by the fire, you and me, as one to another, what do you think will happen after the war? Are we to go back to being as we were?’
MRS. MICKLEHAM. ‘Speaking for myself, Amelia, not me. The war has wakened me up to a understanding of my own importance that is really astonishing.’
MRS. TWYMLEY. ‘Same here. Instead of being the poor worms the like of you and me thought we was, we turns out to be visible departments of a great and haughty empire.’