Page:The Rejuvenation Of Miss Semaphore.pdf/240

 no. She seemed to find perennial satisfaction in contrasting her present state with that she had so unwillingly endured. The great drawback to her happiness was the notoriety given to her case. Three times the sisters had to change lodgings, because of the curiosity they excited amongst their neighbours, and the crowds that collected to watch them pass in or out.

When the trial came on the following week, Arrow Street was crowded to suffocation. All the boarders from Beaconsfield Gardens were once more in the front row, and unbounded interest was excited by the evidence of Prudence. The papers were full of the circumstances. The Daily Telegraph published a leader on it, would-be interviewers made the life of the sisters a misery. Their supposed portraits, horrible caricatures that their own mother would have failed to recognise, appeared in the halfpenny evening papers. The sixpenny weeklies sent artists to sketch them as they sat in court. The medical press took the matter up. Samples of the Water of Youth were called for to be analysed, but without avail, since Mrs. Geldheraus and her mysterious potion had disappeared into the Ewigkeit.