She talked incessantly of helping Mrs Yabsley with the washing, but she seemed as helpless as a child, and Mrs Yabsley, noticing the softness and whiteness of her hands, knew that she had never done a stroke of work in her life.

Then, with the curious reverence of the worker for the idler, she explained to her lodger that she only worked for exercise.
When Miss Perkins came, she had nothing but what she stood up in; but one night she slipped out under cover of darkness, and returned with a dress-basket full of finery, with which she dazzled Mrs Yabsley's eyes in the seclusion of the cottage.

The basket also contained a number of pots and bottles with which she spent hours before the mirror, touching up her eyebrows and cheeks and lips.

When Mrs Yabsley remarked bluntly that she was young and pretty enough without these aids, she learned with amazement that all ladies in society used them.

Mrs Yabsley never tired of hearing Miss Perkins describe the splendours of her lost home.
She recognized that she had lived in another world, where you lounged gracefully on velvet couches and life was one long holiday.
"It's funny," she remarked, "'ow yer run up agin things in this world.
I never 'ad no partic'lar fancy fer dirty clothes an' soapsuds, but in my time, which ever way I went, I never ran agin the drorin'-room carpet an' the easy-chairs.