Mrs Barratt was a grey-haired, stoutish, pince-nezed, slow-moving woman of about sixty-five, with an unhappy and pallid appearance which probably derived from the preoccupation which secretly dominated her life – a preoccupation in pills, medicines and remedies for minor internal complaints – for indigestion, constipation, acidity, liver, rheumatism – as advertised in the daily newspapers and elsewhere. An elderly believer in magic, with passion yet patience she sought and sought for ideal remedies, without ever finding what she sought, but without ever a thought of abandoning her quest. Mrs Barrratt’s eyes, behind her enlarging pince-nez, bore, if one could but see it, the wan, indefatigable, midnight-oil look of one who had yet faith in the Philosopher’s Stone of the sedentary sufferer inside. She gave her mind over to research, and her body over to endless experiment upon herself. No new advertisement in the paper, with a fresh angle, approach, or appeal, ever escaped her close inspection, nor did any article ‘By a Doctor’ or ‘By a Harley Street Specialist’. She grew iller and iller – an ageing, eerie product of the marriage between modern commercial methods and modern medicine. Her outward behaviour was, however, entirely normal, and the Rosamund Tea Rooms had no knowledge of the influences which in fact dominated her life, though it noticed the many different pills and patent foods which appeared from time to time upon her table.