but fortunately Mrs. Lessways had only the vaguest notion of its
dangerousness, and was indeed a negligent kind of woman. Dangerous the
book was! Once in reciting it aloud in her room, Hilda had come so near
to fainting that she had had to stop and lie down on the bed, until she
could convince herself that she was not the male lover crying to his
beloved. An astounding and fearful experience, and not to be too lightly
renewed! For Hilda, _Maud_ was a source of lovely and exquisite pain.

Why had she not used her force of character to obtain more books? One
reason lay in the excessive difficulty to be faced. Birthdays are
infrequent; and besides, the enterprise of purchasing _Maud_ had proved
so complicated and tedious that Mrs. Lessways, with that curious
stiffness which marked her sometimes, had sworn never to attempt to buy
another book. Turnhill, a town of fifteen thousand persons, had no
bookseller; the only bookseller that Mrs. Lessways had ever heard of did
business at Oldcastle. Mrs. Lessways had journeyed twice over the
Hillport ridge to Oldcastle, in the odd quest of a book called _Maud_ by
"Tennyson--the poet laureate"; the book had had to be sent from London;
and on her second excursion to Oldcastle Mrs. Lessways had been caught
by the rain in the middle of Hillport Marsh. No! Hilda could not easily
demand the gift of another book, when all sorts of nice, really useful
presents could be bought in the High Street. Nor was there in Turnhill a
Municipal Library, nor any public lending-library.

Yet possibly Hilda's terrific egoism might have got fresh books somehow
from somewhere, had she really believed in the virtue of books. Thus
far, however, books had not furnished her with what she wanted, and her
faith in their promise was insecure.

Books failing, might she not have escaped into some vocation? The sole