Meanwhile, in the Marylebone Road the lady of the feathers achieved her toilet, assisted by Jessie.  The only evening dress that Cuckoo possessed had been given to her long ago by a young man in the millinery department of a large London shop.  For a week he had adored Cuckoo.  During that week he had presented her with this tremendous gift.  She went into her bedroom now, took it out and looked at it.  The gown rustled a great deal whenever it was moved; this had been the young man’s idea.  He considered that the more a gift rustled, the more aristocratic it was, and, being well acquainted with all the different noises made by different fabrics, he had selected one with a voice as of many waters.  Cuckoo heard it now as in a dream.  She laid it down upon the bed and regarded it by candle-light.  The young man’s taste in sound found its equivalent in his taste in colour.  The hue of the gown was also very loud, the brightest possible green, trimmed with thick yellow imitation lace.  Once it had enchanted Cuckoo, she had put it on with a thrill to go to music-halls with the young man.  But now she gazed upon it with a lack lustre and a doubtful eye.  The flickering flame of the candle lit it up in patches, and those patches had a lurid aspect.  Remembering that Julian had liked her best in black, she shrank from appearing before him in anything so determined.  Yet it was her only dress for the evening, and at first she supposed the wearing of it to be inevitable.  She put it on and went in front of the glass.  In these days she had become even thinner than of old, and more haggard.  The gown increased her tenuity and pallor to the eye, and, after a long moment of painful consideration, Cuckoo resolved to abandon these green glories.  Once her mind was made up, she was out of the dress in an instant; time was short.  She hurriedly extracted her black gown from the wardrobe, caught hold of a pair of scissors, and in a few minutes had ripped the imitation lace from its foundations and was transferring it with trembling fingers to Julian’s gift.  Never before had she worked at any task with such grim determination, or with such deftness; inspired by exceptional circumstances, she might for twenty minutes have been a practised dressmaker.  Certainly, pins were called in as weapons to the attack; but what of that?  Compromises are often only stuck together with pins.  In any case Cuckoo was not entirely in despair with the new aspect of an old friend, and when she was ready was able at least to hope that things might have been worse.

Putting on over the dress a black jacket, she went out into the passage and called down to Mrs. Brigg, who, as usual, was wandering to and fro in her kitchen, like an uneasy shade in nethermost Hades.

“Mrs. Brigg!  Mrs. Brigg, I say!”

“Well?”

“Where’s the whistle?”

Mrs. Brigg came to the bottom of the kitchen stairs.

“What d’ yer want it for?”