she hated it she often did it passionately and thoroughly. That
afternoon, as she emerged from the kitchen, her dark, defiant face was
full of grim satisfaction in the fact that she had left a kitchen
polished and irreproachable, a kitchen without the slightest indication
that it ever had been or ever would be used for preparing human nature's
daily food; a show kitchen. Even the apron which she had worn was hung
in concealment behind the scullery door. The lobby clock, which stood
over six feet high and had to be wound up every night by hauling on a
rope, was noisily getting ready to strike two. But for Mrs. Lessways'
disorderly and undesired assistance, Hilda's task might have been
finished a quarter of an hour earlier. She passed quietly up the stairs.
When she was near the top, her mother's voice, at once querulous and
amiable, came from the sitting-room:

"Where are you going to?"

There was a pause, dramatic for both of them, and in that minute pause
the very life of the house seemed for an instant to be suspended, and
then the waves of the hostile love that united these two women resumed
their beating, and Hilda's lips hardened.

"Upstairs," she answered callously.

No reply from the sitting-room!

At two o'clock on the last Wednesday of every month, old Mr. Skellorn,
employed by Mrs. Lessways to collect her cottage-rents, called with a
statement of account, and cash in a linen bag. He was now due. During
his previous visit Hilda had sought to instil some common sense into her
mother on the subject of repairs, and there had ensued an altercation