The intense solitude that there is in a London crowd these country
girls--for Miss Hilary herself was no more than a girl--could not as
yet realize. They only felt the life of it; stirring, active,
incessantly moving life; even though it was of a kind that they knew
as little of it as the crowd did of them. Nothing struck Hilary more
than the self-absorbed look of passers-by: each so busy on his own
affairs, that, in spite of Selina's alarm, for all notice taken of
them, they might as well be walking among the cows and horses in
Stowbury field.

Poor old Stowbury! They felt how far away they were from it when a
ragged, dirty, vicious looking girl offered them a moss rose bud for
"one penny, only one penny;" which Elizabeth, lagging behind, bought,
and found it only a broken off bud stuck on to a bit of wire.

"That's London ways, I suppose," said she, severely, and became so
misanthropic that she would hardly vouchsafe a glance to the hand
some square they turned into, and merely observed of the tall houses,
taller than any Hilary had ever seen, that she "wouldn't fancy
running up and down them stairs."

But Hilary was cheerful in spite of all. She was glad to be in this
region, which, theoretically, she knew by heart--glad to find herself
in the body, where in the spirit she had come so many a time. The
mere consciousness of this seemed to refresh her. She thought she
would be much happier in London; that in the long years to come that
must be borne, it would be good for her to have something to do as
well as to hope for; something to fight with as well as to endure.
Now more than ever came pulsing in and out of her memory a line once
repeated in her hearing, with an observation of how "true" it was.