quietly.

From six to nine in the evening they again talked and read
alternately. Their conversation was now retrospective; each revived
memories of what she had endured in one or the other house of
bondage. Never had it been their lot to serve 'really nice'
people--this phrase of theirs was anything but meaningless. They had
lived with more or less well-to-do families in the lower middle
class--people who could not have inherited refinement, and had not
acquired any, neither proletarians nor gentlefolk, consumed with a
disease of vulgar pretentiousness, inflated with the miasma of
democracy. It would have been but a natural result of such a life if
the sisters had commented upon it in a spirit somewhat akin to that
of their employers; but they spoke without rancour, without
scandalmongering. They knew themselves superior to the women who had
grudgingly paid them, and often smiled at recollections which would
have moved the servile mind to venomous abuse.

At nine o'clock they took a cup of cocoa and a biscuit, and half an
hour later they went to bed. Lamp oil was costly; and indeed they
felt glad to say as early as possible that another day had gone by.

Their hour of rising was eight. Mrs. Conisbee provided hot water for
their breakfast. On descending to fetch it, Virginia found that the
postman had left a letter for her. The writing on the envelope
seemed to be a stranger's. She ran upstairs again in excitement.

'Who can this be from, Alice?'

The elder sister had one of her headaches this morning; she was clay