replied: "She pretends not to be, if I may say so; but I think she's
really thinking over what she'll take." When her friend asked her what
Owen was doing, she could have but one answer: "He's waiting, dear lady,
to see what _you_ do!"

Mrs. Gereth, a month after she had received her great shock, did
something abrupt and extraordinary: she caught up her companion and went
to have a look at Ricks. They had come to London first and taken a train
from Liverpool Street, and the least of the sufferings they were armed
against was that of passing the night. Fleda's admirable dressing-bag
had been given her by her friend. "Why, it's charming!" she exclaimed a
few hours later, turning back again into the small prim parlor from a
friendly advance to the single plate of the window. Mrs. Gereth hated
such windows, the one flat glass, sliding up and down, especially when
they enjoyed a view of four iron pots on pedestals, painted white and
containing ugly geraniums, ranged on the edge of a gravel-path and doing
their best to give it the air of a terrace. Fleda had instantly averted
her eyes from these ornaments, but Mrs. Gereth grimly gazed, wondering
of course how a place in the deepest depths of Essex and three miles
from a small station could contrive to look so suburban. The room was
practically a shallow box, with the junction of the walls and ceiling
guiltless of curve or cornice and marked merely by the little band of
crimson paper glued round the top of the other paper, a turbid gray
sprigged with silver flowers. This decoration was rather new and quite
fresh; and there was in the centre of the ceiling a big square beam
papered over in white, as to which Fleda hesitated about venturing to
remark that it was rather picturesque. She recognized in time that this
remark would be weak and that, throughout, she should be able to say
nothing either for the mantelpieces or for the doors, of which she saw
her companion become sensible with a soundless moan. On the subject of
doors especially Mrs. Gereth had the finest views: the thing in the
world she most despised was the meanness of the single flap. From end to
end, at Poynton, there were high double leaves. At Ricks the entrances
to the rooms were like the holes of rabbit-hutches.

It was all, none the less, not so bad as Fleda had feared; it was faded
and melancholy, whereas there had been a danger that it would be
contradictious and positive, cheerful and loud. The house was cr