other. We made that Misterton tea-party and the subsequent
marriages of my cousins and the world of Burslem generally, matter
for quite an agreeable conversation until at last Altiora, following
her invariable custom, called me by name imperatively out of our
duologue. "Mr. Remington," she said, "we want your opinion--" in
her entirely characteristic effort to get all the threads of
conversation into her own hands for the climax that always wound up
her dinners. How the other women used to hate those concluding
raids of hers! I forget most of the other people at that dinner,
nor can I recall what the crowning rally was about. It didn't in
any way join on to my impression of Margaret.

In the drawing-room of the matting floor I rejoined her, with
Altiora's manifest connivance, and in the interval I had been
thinking of our former meeting.

"Do you find London," I asked, "give you more opportunity for doing
things and learning things than Burslem?"

She showed at once she appreciated my allusion to her former
confidences. "I was very discontented then," she said and paused.
"I've really only been in London for a few months. It's so
different. In Burslem, life seems all business and getting--without
any reason. One went on and it didn't seem to mean anything. At
least anything that mattered. . . . London seems to be so full of
meanings--all mixed up together."

She knitted her brows over her words and smiled appealingly at the
end as if for consideration for her inadequate expression,
appealingly and almost humorously.