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“I have half forgotten mine already,” she said. “To-night I remembered it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived.”

She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it impossible to continue the subject.

“You will never escape in those clothes,” I said. “You haven’t the ghost of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find for you.”

I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on deaf ears.

She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and spread them before her. But she would have none of them.

“The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor,” she said, tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious that she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their lighter side.

“I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,” said my visitor. “It shows how long it is since I have been ‘in the know.’ No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things won’t do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so than I am at this moment. You don’t happen to have an old black ulster with all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck? That’s more my style. But of course you haven’t.”

“I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give it away. So I put it in the dog’s basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He loved it, poor dear! It may be there still.”

We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo’s basket out from under the stairs.

The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the basket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost darling.

“The very thing!” she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty of a coat shook itself free. “Quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree. Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided, equipped.”

We went back to the kitchen again.

“What will you do with them?” I said, pointing to her convict clothes which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How such quantities of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.

“It certainly does not improve one’s clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in a ploughed field,” she said meditatively. “I will dispose of them early to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here.”

“Not on my premises?” I said anxiously.

“Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingratitude? I’ll manage that all right.”

I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I went to the larder, and when I came back I looked at her with renewed amazement.

My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had been toasting before the fire.

Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and passed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.