The genteel and rather elderly coven of the Misses Tate, Rogerson and Shaw had exasperated her, but they meant well and so Gwendolen had suffered them sublimely, every morning donning a mask of docility, along with the librarian habit of lisle stockings, tweed skirt, woollen cardigan and one of her increasingly worn-out lawn blouses. She may as well have joined a holy order, so cloistered did her life grow between the Library and Mother.
