women sat,
close to each other, both incommoded by the unwholesome sultriness of
the only chamber that could be spared for the private use of the
house-mistress. This small bedroom was Sarah Gailey's home; its
amenities were the ultimate nightly reward of her labours. If George
Cannon had obtained possession of the Cedars as an occupation for Sarah,
this room and Sarah's pleasure therein were the sole justification of
the entire mansion.

As Hilda looked at Sarah Gailey's bowed head, but little greyed, beneath
the ray of the lamp, and at her shrivelled, neurotic, plaintive face in
shadow, and at her knotty hands loosely clasped, she contrasted her
companion and the scene with the youthfulness and the spaciousness and
the sturdy gay vigour of existence in the household of the Orgreaves.
She thought, with a renewed sense of the mysterious strangeness of life:
"Last night I was there, far away--all those scores of miles of fields
and towns are between!--and to-night I am here. Down there I was nothing
but an idler. Here I am the strongest. I am indispensable. I am the one
person on whom she depends. Without me everything will go to pieces."
And she thought of George Cannon's vast enigmatic projects concerning
grand hotels. In passing the immense pile of St. Pancras on the way from
Euston to King's Cross, George Cannon had waved his hand and said: "Look
at that! Look at that! It's something after that style that I want for a
toy! And I'll have it!" Yes, the lofty turrets of St. Pancras had not
intimidated him. He, fresh from little Turnhill and from defeats, could
rise at once to the height of them, and by the force of imagination make
them his own! He could turn abruptly from the law--to hotels! A
disconcerting man! And the mere tone in which he mentioned his
enterprise seemed, in a most surprising way, to dignify hotels, and even
boarding-houses; to give romance to the perfectly unromantic business of
lodging and catering!... And the seed from which he was to grow the
magic plant sat in the room there with Hilda: that bowed head! The
ambition and the dream resembled St. Pancras: the present reality was
the Cedars, and Sarah's poor, stuffy little bedroom in the Cedars.

Sarah began to cry, weakly.

"But what's the matter?" asked Hilda, the strong succourer.

"Nothing. Only it's such a relief to me you've come."

Hilda deprecated lightly. "I should have come sooner if I'd known. You
ought to have sent word before."