“Good evening, Mrs. McNab,” she said, and told cook to keep a plate of milk soup for her⁠—quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy basket all the way up from town. She could see her now, stooping over her flowers (and faint and flickering, like a yellow beam or the circle at the end of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping over her flowers, went wandering over the bedroom wall, up the dressing-table, across the washstand, as Mrs. McNab hobbled and ambled, dusting, straightening).

And cook’s name now? Mildred? Marian?⁠—some name like that. Ah, she had forgotten⁠—she did forget things. Fiery, like all red-haired women. Many a laugh they had had. She was always welcome in the kitchen. She made them laugh, she did. Things were better then than now.