"What does your mother want to do?"

"Oh!" said Hilda, speaking low. "It's not mother. I've come to consult
you myself. Mother doesn't know. I'm nearly twenty-one, and it's really
my property, you know!" She blushed with shame.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. He tried to disguise his astonishment in an easy,
friendly smile. But he was most obviously startled. He looked at Hilda
in a different way, with a much intensified curiosity.

"Yes," she resumed. He now seemed to her more like a fellow-creature,
and less like a member of the inimical older generation.

"So you're nearly twenty-one?"

"In December," she said. "And I think under my father's will--" She
stopped, at a loss. "The fact is, I don't think mother will be quite
able to look after the property properly, and I'm afraid--you see, now
that Mr. Skellorn has had this stroke--"

"Yes," said Mr. Cannon, "I heard about that, and I was thinking perhaps
Mrs. Lessways had sent you.... We collect rents, you know."

"I see!" Hilda murmured. "Well, the truth is, mother hasn't the
slightest idea I'm here. Not the slightest! And I wouldn't hurt her
feelings for anything." He nodded sympathetically. "But I thought
something ought to be done. She's decided to collect our Calder Street
rents herself, and she isn't fitted to do it. And then there's the
question of the repairs.... I know the rents are going down. I expect
it's all mother's for life, but I want there to be something left for me