her glad. I've never had any
difficulty in making money, and when I've settled up everything down
there I shan't be precisely without. And I shall have no excuse for not
branching out in a new line."

She meekly encouraged him to continue.

"Oh yes!" he went on. "The law isn't the only thing--not by a long way.
And besides, I'm sick of it. Do you know what the great thing of the
future is, I mean the really great thing--the smashing big thing?" He
smiled, kindly and confidential.

She too smiled, shaking her head.

"Well, I'll tell you. Hotels!"

"Hotels?" She was perfectly nonplussed.

"Hotels! There'll be more money and more fun to be got out of hotels,
soon, than out of any other kind of enterprise in the world. You should
see those hotels that are going up in London! They'd give you a start,
and no mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who
know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in
a comically naive tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by
bit! Now, if it hadn't been for Sarah--and that boarding-house--"

He was using his straw hat as a fan. With an unexpected and almost
childlike gesture he suddenly threw the hat up on to the rack above his
head, "How's that?"

"What a boy he is, after all!" thought Hilda sympathetically, wondering
why in the midst of all her manifold astonishment she felt so
light-hearted and gay.

"Funny parcel you've got up there!" he idly observed, glancing from one
rack to the other.

The parcel contained Mrs. Orgreave's generous conception of a repast
proper to be eaten in a train in place of high tea. He helped her to eat
it.

As the train approached London he resumed his manhood. And he was
impeccably adult as he conducted her from Euston to King's Cross, and
put her into a train in a corner of the station that the summer twilight
had already taken possession of.

III

Late at night Hilda sat with Sarah Gailey in the landlady's small
bedroom at the Cedars. It was lighted by a lamp, because the builder of
the house, hating excess, had thought fit not to carry gas-pipes higher
than the first floor. A large but old bedstead filled half the floor
space. On the shabby dressing-table a pile of bills and various papers
lay near the lamp. Clothes were hung behind the door, and a vague wisp
of muslin moved slightly in the warm draught from the tiny open window.
There were two small cane-chairs, enamelled, on which the