cut your hair. I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest iota from

your appearance. We shall now see how the electric-blue dress will become you.

You will find it laid out upon the bed in your room, and if you would be so

good as to put it on we should both be extremely obliged.’


“The dress which I found waiting for me was of a peculiar shade of blue.

It was of excellent material, a sort of beige, but it bore unmistakable signs

of having been worn before. It could not have been a better fit if I had been

measured for it. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle expressed a delight at the look of

it, which seemed quite exaggerated in its vehemence. They were waiting for me

in the drawing-room, which is a very large room, stretching along the entire

front of the house, with three long windows reaching down to the floor. A chair

had been placed close to the central window, with its back turned towards it.

In this I was asked to sit, and then Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down on the

other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest stories that

I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how comical he was, and I laughed

until I was quite weary. Mrs. Rucastle, however, who has evidently no sense of

humour, never so much as smiled, but sat with her hands in her lap, and a sad,

anxious look upon her face. After an hour or so, Mr. Rucastle suddenly remarked

that it was time to commence the duties of the day, and that I might change my

dress and go to little Edward in the nursery.


“Two days later this same performance was gone through under exactly

similar circumstances. Again I changed my dress, again I sat in the window, and

again I laughed very heartily at the funny stories of which my employer had an

immense répertoire, and which he told inimitably. Then he handed me a

yellow-backed novel, and moving my chair a little sideways, that my own shadow

might not fall upon the page, he begged me to read aloud to him. I read for