talk--real, natural talk, about what they felt, what they would have
liked, what they still tried to hope? And she could not help thinking
that Mrs. Arbuthnot, too, was reading that very same advertisement.
Her eyes were on the very part of the paper. Was she, too, picturing
what it would be like--the colour, the fragrance, the light, the soft
lapping of the sea among little hot rocks? Colour, fragrance, light,
sea; instead of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the wet omnibuses, and the fish
department at Shoolbred's, and the Tube to Hampstead, and dinner, and
to-morrow the same and the day after the same and always the same . . .

Suddenly Mrs. Wilkins found herself leaning across the table.
"Are you reading about the mediaeval castle and the wisteria?" she
heard herself asking.

Naturally Mrs. Arbuthnot was surprised; but she was not half so
much surprised as Mrs. Wilkins was at herself for asking.

Mrs. Arbuthnot had not yet to her knowledge set eyes on the
shabby, lank, loosely-put-together figure sitting opposite her, with
its small freckled face and big grey eyes almost disappearing under a
smashed-down wet-weather hat, and she gazed at her a moment without
answering. She was reading about the mediaeval castle and the
wisteria, or rather had read about it ten minutes before, and since
then had been lost in dreams--of light, of colour, of fragrance, of the
soft lapping of the sea among little hot rocks . . .

"Why do you ask me that?" she said in her grave voice, for her
training of and by the poor had made her grave and patient.

Mrs. Wilkins flushed and looked excessively shy and frightened.