as not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her daughter. She
was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly human. And not only
was she deficient in practical common sense and most absurdly unable to
learn from experience, but she had not even the wit to cover her
shortcomings by resorting to the traditional authoritativeness of the
mother. Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous. She
was too simply honest to acquire stature by standing on her maternal
dignity. By a profound instinct she wistfully treated everybody as an
equal, as a fellow-creature; even her own daughter. It was not the way
to come with credit out of the threatened altercation about
rent-collecting.

As Hilda offered no reply, Mrs. Lessways said reproachfully:

"Hilda, you're too bad sometimes!" And then, after a further silence:
"Anyhow, I'm quite decided."

"Then what's the good of talking about it?" said the merciless child.

"But _why_ shouldn't I collect the rents myself? I'm not asking you to
collect them. And I shall save the five per cent., and goodness knows we
need it."

"You're more likely to lose twenty-five per cent.," said Hilda. "I'll
have some more tea, please."

Mrs. Lessways was quite genuinely scandalized. "You needn't think I
shall be easy with those Calder Street tenants, because I shan't! Not
me! I'm more likely to be too hard!"

"You'll be too hard, and you'll be too easy, too," said Hilda savagely.
"You'll lose the good tenants and you'll keep the bad ones, and the
houses will all go to rack and ruin, and then you'll sell all the
property at a loss. That's how it will be. And what shall you do if
you're not feeling well, and if it rains on Monday mornings?"

Hilda could conceive her mother forgetting all about the rents on Monday
morning, or putting them off till Monday afternoon on some grotesque
excuse. Her fancy heard the interminable complainings, devisings, futile
resolvings, of the self-appointed collector. It was impossible to
imagine a woman less fitted by nature than her mother to collect rents
from unthrifty artisans such as inhabited Calder Street. The project
sickened her. It would render the domestic existence an inferno.

As for Mrs. Lessways, she was shocked, for her project had seemed very
beautiful to her, and for the moment she was perfectly convinced that
she could collect rents and manage property as well as anyone. She was
convinced that her habits were regular, he