up there, you see. I'm quite sure you can save the
situation."

He was frankly depending on her for something which he admitted he could
not accomplish himself. Those two people, George Cannon and Sarah
Gailey, had both instinctively turned to her in a crisis. None could do
what she could do. She, by the force of her individuality, could save
the situation. She was no longer a girl, but a mature and influential
being. Her ancient diffidence before George Cannon had completely gone;
she had no qualms, no foreboding, no dubious sensation of weakness.
Indeed, she felt herself in one respect his superior, for his confidence
in Sarah Gailey's housewifely skill, his conviction that it was unique
and would be irreplaceable, struck her as somewhat naif, as being yet
another example of the absurd family pride which she and her mother had
often noticed in the Five Towns. She was not happy at the prospect of so
abruptly quitting the delights of Lane End House and the vicinity of
Edwin Clayhanger; she was not happy at the prospect of postponing the
consideration of plans for her own existence; she was not happy at the
prospect of Sarah Gailey's pessimistic complainings. She was above
happiness. She was above even that thrill of sharp and intense vitality
which in times past had ennobled trouble and misery. She had the most
exquisite feeling of triumphant self-justification. She was splendidly
conscious of power. She was indispensable.

And the dismantled desolation of the echoing office, and the mystery of
George Cannon's personal position, somehow gave a strange poignancy to
her mood.

They talked of indifferent matters: her property, the Orgreaves, even
the defunct newspaper, as to which George Cannon shrugged his shoulders.
Then the conversation drooped.

"I shall go up by the four train to-morrow," she said, clinching the
interview, and rising.

"I may go up by that train myself," said George Cannon.

She started. "Oh! are you going to Hornsey, too?"

"No! Not Hornsey. I've other business."

CHAPTER II
SARAH'S BENEFACTOR

I

On the following afternoon Hilda travelled alone by the local train from
Bleakridge to Knype, the central station where all voyagers for London,
Birmingham, and Manchester had to foregather in order to take the fast
expresses that unwillingly halted there, and there only, in their
skimming flights across the district. It was a custom of Five Towns
hospitality that a departing guest sho