, and that she was often feverish, and that
she had no energy whatever. "I am at a very trying age for a woman," she
said. "I don't know whether you understand, but I've come to a time of
life that really upsets one above a bit, and I'm fit for nothing." Hilda
understood; she was flattered, even touched, by this confidence; it made
her feel older, and more important in the world, and a whole generation
away from Alicia, who was drawing up the blind with the cries and
awkward gestures of a prattling infant. To the letter there was a
postscript: "Has George been to see you yet about me? He wrote me he
should, but I haven't heard since. In fact, I've been waiting to hear.
I'll say nothing about that yet. I'm ashamed you should be bothered.
It's so important for you to have a good holiday. Again, much love,
S.G." The prim handwriting got smaller and smaller towards the end of
the postscript and the end of the page, and the last lines were
perfectly parallel with the lower edge of the paper; all the others
sloped feebly downwards from left to right.

"Oh!" piped Alicia from the window. "Maggie Clayhanger has got her
curtains up in the drawing-room! Oh! Aren't they proud things! _Oh_!--I
do believe she's caught me staring at her!" And Alicia withdrew abruptly
into the room, blushing for her detected sin of ungenteel curiosity. She
bumped down on the bed. "Three days more," she said. "Not counting
to-day. Four, counting to-day."

"School?"

Alicia nodded, her finger in her mouth. "Isn't it horrid, going to
school on a day like this? I hear you and Janet are off up to Hillport
this afternoon again, to play tennis. You do have times!"

"No," said Hilda. "I've got to go to Turnhill this afternoon."

"But Janet told me you were--" Her glance fell on the letter. "Is it
business?"

"Yes."

The child was impressed, and her change of tone, her frank awe, gave
pleasure to Hilda's vanity. "Shall I go and tell Jane? She isn't near
dressed."

"Yes, do."

Off scampered Alicia, leaving the door unlatched behind her.

Hilda gazed at the letter, holding it limply in her left hand amid the
soft disorder of the counterpane. It had come to her, an intolerably
pathetic messenger and accuser, out of the exacerbating frowsiness of
the Cedars. Yesterday afternoon care-ridden Sarah Gailey was writing it,
with sighs, at the desk in her stuffy, uncomfortable bedroom. As Hilda
gazed at the formation of the words, she could see the unhappy S