give 'Azel all the liver and bacon. I s'pose your mother can eat as
well as schoolgirls?'

Albert was gazing at Hazel so animatedly, so obviously approving of all
she said, that her aunt was very much ruffled.

'No wonder you only want to be like yourself,' he said. 'Jam! my word,
Hazel, you're jam!'

'Albert!' cried his mother raspingly, with a pathetic note of pleading,
'haven't I always taught you to say preserve?' She was not pleading
against the inelegant word, but against Hazel.

When Albert went back to the shop, Hazel helped her aunt to wash up.
All the time she was doing this, with unusual care, and cleaning the
knives--a thing she hated--she was waiting anxiously for the expected
invitation to stay the night. She longed for it as the righteous long
for the damnation of their enemies. She never paid a visit except here,
and to her it was a wild excitement. The gas-stove, the pretty china,
the rose-patterned wall-paper, were all strange and marvellous as a
fairy-tale. At home there was no paper, no lath and plaster, only the
bare bricks, and the ceiling was of bulging sailcloth hung under the
rafters.

Now to all these was added the new delight of Albert's admiring gaze--an
alert, live gaze, a thing hitherto unknown to Albert. Perhaps, if she
stayed, Albert would take her out for the evening. She would see the
streets of the town in the magic of lights. She would walk out in her
new dress with a real young man--a young man who possessed a gilt
watch-chain. The suspense, as the wintry afternoon drew in, became