“A cab, of course,” cried Cuckoo, in the narrow voice of one in a hurry.

“A cab!” rejoined Mrs. Brigg, ascending the dark stairs all the time she was speaking.  “And what do you want with cabs, I should like to know?  Who pays for ’em, that’s what I say; who’s to do it?”

Her grey head hove in sight.

“Where are you going?  Piccadilly?”

“No; get the whistle.”

“What—­and no hat!”

She was evidently impressed.

“A toff is it?” she ejaculated, obviously appeased.  “Well! so long as I get the rent I—­”

With a white glare Cuckoo seized the whistle from her claw, and in a moment was driving away through the snow.

Mrs. Brigg trotted back to the kitchen decidedly relieved.  Cuckoo’s suddenly altered mode of life had tried her greatly.  The girl had taken to going out in the day and staying at home at night.  Simultaneously with this changed régime her funds had evidently become low.  She had begun to live less well, to watch more keenly than of old the condition in which her commons went down to the kitchen and returned from it on the advent of the next meal.  By various little symptoms the landlady knew that her lodger was getting hard up.  Yet no amount of badgering and argument would induce Cuckoo to say why she sat indoors at night.  She acknowledged that she was not ill.  Mrs. Brigg had been seriously exercised.  But now her old heart was glad.  Cuckoo was, perhaps, mounting into higher circles, circles in which hats were not worn during the evening.  And as Mrs. Brigg entered her nethermost hell she broke into a thin, quavering song: 

“In ’er ’air she wore a white cam-eeiyer,
Dark blue was the colour of ’er heye.”

It was her song of praise.  She always sang it on great occasions.

When the lady of the feathers reached Victoria Street she found the little party already assembled.  Valentine met her ceremoniously in the violet-scented hall and helped her to slide out of her jacket.  His glance upon the imitation lace was quick and gay, but Cuckoo did not see it.  She was gazing at the flowers, and when she entered the drawing-room and found herself in the midst of the orchids, the West Indian flowers and the palms, her astonishment knew no bounds.

“I never!” she murmured under her breath.

Then she forgot the flowers, having only time to remember to be shy.  Dinner was immediately announced by Wade, whose years of trained discretion could not banish a faint accent of surprise from his voice.  He was, in fact, bouleversé by this celebration of the death of the old year.  Valentine offered Cuckoo his arm.  She took it awkwardly, with a shooting glance of question at the doctor, who seemed her only spar in this deep social sea.  Valentine placed her beneath the bell of violets, and took his seat beside her.  Julian was on her other hand, the doctor exactly opposite.  Wade presented her