"No, I couldn't. After all, what is it? I'm only silly. There's nothing
really the matter. The minute you come I can see that. I can even stand
those Boutwoods if you're here. You know George made it up with them;
and I won't say he wasn't right. But I had to put my pride in my pocket.
And yesterday it nearly made me scream out to see Mrs. Boutwood stir her
tea."

"But why?"

"I don't know. It's nerves, that's what it is.... Well, I've got to go
through these." She fingered the papers on the dressing-table with her
left hand while drying her tears with the right. "He's very wishful for
proper accounts, George is. That's right enough. But--well--I think I
can make a shilling go as far as anyone, and choose flesh-meat with
anyone, too--that I will say--but these accounts...! George is always
wanting to know how much it costs a head a week for this that and the
other.... It's all very well for him, but if he had the servants to look
after and--"

"I'm going to keep your accounts for you," Hilda soothed her.

"But--"

"I'm going to keep your accounts for you," And she thought: "How exactly
like mother I was just then!"

It appeared to Hilda that she was making a promise, and shouldering a
responsibility, against her will, and perhaps against her common sense.
She might keep accounts at the Cedars for a week, a fortnight, a month.
But she could not keep accounts there indefinitely. She was sowing
complications for herself. Freedom and change and luxury were what she
deemed she desired; not a desk in a boarding-house. And yet something
within her compelled her to say in a firm, sure, kindly voice:

"Now give me all those papers, Miss Gailey."

And amid indefinite regret and foreboding, she was proud and happy in
her role of benefactor.

When Hilda at length rose to go to her own room, Sarah Gailey had to
move her chair so that she might pass. At the door both hesitated for an
instant, and then Hilda with a sudden gesture advanced her lips. It was
the first time she and Sarah had ever kissed. The contact with that
desiccated skin intensified to an extraordinary degree Hilda's emotional
sympathy for the ageing woman. She thought, poignantly: "Poor old
thing!"

And when she was on the dark little square landing under the roof,
Sarah, holding the lamp, called out in a whisper.

"Hilda!"

"Well?"

"Did he say anything to you about Brighton?"

"Brighton?" She perceived with certainty from Sarah's eager and yet