ought, unsuccessfully, against the humiliating idea
that his personal smartness convicted her of being shabby--of being even
inefficient in one department of her existence; and she could have
wished to be magnificently dressed.

"Mrs. Lessways is a very shrewd lady--very shrewd indeed!" said Mr.
Cannon, with a smile, this time, to indicate humorously that Mrs.
Lessways was not so easy to handle as might be imagined, and that even
the cleverest must mind their p's and q's with such a lady.

"Oh yes, she _is_!" Hilda agreed, with an exaggerated emphasis that
showed a lack of conviction. Indeed, she had never thought of her mother
as a _very_ shrewd lady.

Mr. Cannon continued to smile in silence upon the shrewdness of Mrs.
Lessways, giving little appreciative movements of the diaphragm, drawing
in his lips and by consequence pushing out his cheeks like a child's;
and his eyes were all the time saying lightly: "Still, I managed her!"
And while this pleasant intimate silence persisted, the noises of the
market-place made themselves prominent, quite agreeably--in particular
the hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under
the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space
too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured
cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the
strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid
effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a
footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere was different from that
of the first interview. And none knew! And she alone had brought it all
about by a simple caprice!

"I was fine and startled when I saw you at our door, Mr. Cannon!" she
said.

He might have said, "Were you? You didn't show it." She was half
expecting him to say some such thing. But he became reflective, and
began: "Well, you see--" and then hesitated.

"You didn't tell me you thought of calling."

"Well," he proceeded at last--and she could not be sure whether he was
replying to her or not--"I was pretty nearly ready to buy that Calder
Street property. And I thought I'd talk _that_ over with your mother
first! It just happened to make a good beginning, you see." He spoke
with all the flattering charm of the confidential.

Hilda flushed. Under her mother's suggestion, she had been misjudging
him. He had not been guilty of mere scheming. She was profoundly glad.
The act of apo