Market Square not even the late edition of the _Staffordshire Signal_
was cried, though it was discreetly on sale with its excellent sporting
news in a few shops. In the hot and malodorous candle-lit factories,
where the real strenuous life of the town would remain cooped up for
another half-hour of the evening, men and women had yet scarcely taken
to horse-racing; they would gamble upon rabbits, cocks, pigeons, and
their own fists, without the mediation of the _Signal_. The one noise in
the Market Square was the bell of a hawker selling warm pikelets at a
penny each for the high tea of the tradesmen. The hawker was a deathless
institution, a living proof that withdrawn Turnhill would continue
always to be exactly what it always had been. Still, to the east of the
Square, across the High Street, a vast space was being cleared of hovels
for the erection of a new town hall daringly magnificent.

Hilda crossed the Square, scorning it.

She said to herself: "I'd better get the thing over before I buy the
thread. I should never be able to stand Miss Dayson's finicking! I
should scream out!" But the next instant, with her passion for proving
to herself how strong she could be, she added: "Well, I just _will_ buy
the thread first!" And she went straight into Dayson's little fancy
shop, which was full of counter and cardboard boxes and Miss Dayson, and
stayed therein for at least five minutes, emerging with a miraculously
achieved leisureliness. A few doors away was a somewhat new building, of
three storeys--the highest in the Square. The ground floor was an
ironmongery; it comprised also a side entrance, of which the door was
always open. This side entrance showed a brass-plate, "Q. Karkeek,
Solicitor." And the wire-blinds of the two windows of the first floor
also bore the words: "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor. Q. Karkeek, Solicitor." The
queerness of the name had attracted Hilda's attention several years