Bruey was just her own age, had "great dark eyes" (Jane-Anne was pleasantly conscious of possessing similar orbs), had palpitations. Jane-Anne couldn't quite achieve these, but felt that crepitations were nearly as good and that she was, at all events, near the rose, if not the royal flower herself.
Bruey had no father (another resemblance) and a mother, who, though an industrious church-worker, was perhaps not quite as understanding and sympathetic as she might have been. Put Mrs. Dew in place of the mother and there you are!
Bruey always read her Bible seated upon a box in her bedroom window; "a folded rug upon this box made it soft and comfortable for a seat." Here she studied the scriptures and said her prayers, watching the sunset the while. She always kept a pencil by her and marked the texts she found most helpful, and Jane-Anne's Bible already was scored heavily in hundreds of places. Its newness (being a prize) was rather afflicting, so she wetted her thumb and doubled down the corners to hasten its look of age and constant use.
The box and the window were denied to Jane-Anne at the Bainbridge, for twelve girls slept in a dormitory where the ledges of the windows were five feet from the ground, and no box of any sort was permitted in an apartment of almost superhuman neatness.
At Jeune Street, too, the room was so small that the window was blocked up by a chest of drawers far too heavy for Jane-Anne to move.
But the moment she came to Holywell she perceived glorious possibilities of Bruey-ness in the fine big bedroom her aunt had given up to her. It is true that the dressing-table stood in the window, but it was an old-fashioned, spindle-legged affair with swing looking-glass attached, quite light and easy to move, and the moment that Jane-Anne could get about without assistance she pulled it back into the room, dragged her empty tin box under the window, and having no shawl, folded her dressing-gown on the top to make it "soft and comfortable for a seat."
As a matter of fact it did nothing of the kind, the box was dinted and lumpy and very hard, but what cared Jane-Anne? Bruey's box was covered with chintz, but that, she felt, was a very minor detail. The main properties were all there—box, window, Bible, little girl.
That the window did not face towards the west was disappointing; that very little sky was to be seen owing to the presence of a tall house just across the yard was rather annoying. Still, there was the box and there was the window, and there was Jane-Anne, ready to throw herself into the part of Bruey with the utmost abandon.
She even improved upon Bruey, grafting on to the character certain attributes of Miss Stukely.
That morning, Mrs. Dew had turned out the kitchen cupboard, and among discarded bottles and boxes Jane-Anne had found a tiny phial that had contained vanilla essence. This she secretly pocketed. She tore a piece off her sponge, thrust it into the little bottle and then hied her to the bath-room where there was some Scrubbs' Ammonia. In a trice the bits of sponge in the bottle were saturated with that pungent fluid. Behold Jane-Anne equipped with a smelling bottle, quite as efficacious if not so handsome as Miss Stukely's.