this town," observed Mrs. Grant, on the doorstep. "I can't
think _what_ you'll do, Mrs. Lessways!"

"I shall collect my rents myself," was the answer.

When Mrs. Grant had crossed the road and taken the bricked path leading
to the paralytic's house, Mrs. Lessways slowly shut the door and bolted
it, and then said to Hilda:

"Well, my girl, I do think you might have tried to show just a little
more feeling!"

They were close together in the narrow lobby, of which the heavy pulse
was the clock's ticking.

Hilda replied:

"You surely aren't serious about collecting those rents yourself, are
you, mother?"

"Serious? Of course I'm serious!" said Mrs. Lessways.

II

"Why shouldn't I collect the rents myself?" asked Mrs. Lessways.

This half-defiant question was put about two hours later. In the
meantime no remark had been made about the rents. Mother and daughter
were now at tea in the sitting-room. Hilda had passed the greater part
of those two hours upstairs in her bedroom, pondering on her mother's
preposterous notion of collecting the rents herself. Alone, she would
invent conversations with her mother, silencing the foolish woman with
unanswerable sarcastic phrases that utterly destroyed her illogical
arguments. She would repeat these phrases, repeat even entire
conversations, with pleasure; and, dwelling also with pleasure upon her
grievances against her mother, would gradually arrive at a state of
dull-glowing resentment. She could, if she chose, easily free her brain
from the obsession either by reading or by a sharp jerk of volition; but
often she preferred not to do so, saying to herself voluptuously: "No, I
_will_ nurse my grievance; I'll nurse it and nurse it and nurse it! It
is mine, and it is just, and anybody with any sense at all would admit
instantly that I am absolutely right." Thus it was on this afternoon.
When she came to tea her face was formidably expressive, nor would she
attempt to modify the rancour of those uncompromising features. On the
contrary, as soon as she saw that her mother had noticed her condition,
she deliberately intensified it.

Mrs. Lessways, who was incapable of sustained thought, and who had
completely forgotten and recalled the subject of the cottage-rents
several times since the departure of Mrs. Grant, nevertheless at once
diagnosed the cause of the trouble; and with her usual precipitancy
began to repulse an attack which had not even been opened. Mrs. Lessways
w