The Will and the Way by Bernard Capes — Read

Miss Pringle was very miserable with a cold. Her face, ordinarily of a lachrymose cast, exhibited now such an excess of the melting-mood as to suggest the possibility of its running away altogether. She coughed and sniffed and gurgled and cleared her throat and blew her nose, and was, in general rundownedness, if one may use the expression, not unlike a guttering tallow candle in need of snuffing. Something of this, no doubt, was due to the soft sentiments awakened by a perusal of a sixpenny novelette, which lay at that moment face-downwards in her lap; but chagrin over the physical woefulness of her state, as representing generally her moral ineffectiveness in life, contributed largely to the result. She was loveless and forlorn, she felt, and that for the sole simple reason that she lacked the one recommendation which of all recommendations was without a shadow of credit to its possessor--the recommendation of beauty. Unflanked by that, the loveliest qualities counted for nothing--were made, indeed, the frequent text for secret mockery and laughter. Archness, for instance--how forgiveable a coquetry in the well-favoured; but, were she to attempt it, what unkind comments! And yet it sprang from the same vivacious impulse in all; only the vehicle excused or condemned it--the vehicle, which, in a world of reasoning people, ought not to be considered of the slightest importance. It was very unfair.

She turned up the wick of the sinking lamp--for it was evening, and, in number three, King's Terrace, paraffin still obtained--stirred the cup of hot cocoa which stood by her side, and, drawing her shawl closer about her, reflected dolefully.