settled.

"He simply can't abide my letting rooms; he's on to me about it
morning, noon, and night."

"I'm sorry."

"To think," as he says, "the daughter of a sea captain--" Here Mrs
Farthing caught Mavis' eye, to substitute for what she was about to
say: "But there," he says, "work your fingers to the bone; go and
commit suicide by overdoing it; kill yourself outright with making
other people comfortable, so long as you get your own way."

"Really!"

"That's what he says every minute of the time that he's at home."

When Mavis left Mrs Farthing to walk to the station, she could not
help noticing how the rough and tumble of her experiences had had a
hardening effect upon her once soft heart. It was not so long ago
that, although presumption on a landlady's part would have goaded
Mavis into making an apposite retort, she would have bitterly
regretted the pain that her words may have inflicted. Now, she was
indifferent to any annoyance that she may have caused Mrs Farthing.
If anything, she was rather pleased with herself for having shown
the woman her place.

It was something of an experience for Mavis to spend the evening in
the sitting-room of a country railway station. Stillness violently
alternated with the roar and rush of the trains. Mr Medlicott spent