Somehow, it seemed to Lesley as if she hated the expedition on which she came. Was it not a little too like spying upon her father's work? He had never invited her to Macclesfield Buildings. And he would never know the spirit in which she came: it would seem to him as though she had been brought in Mrs. Romaine's train, perhaps against her will, to laugh, to stare, to criticize. She would rather have crept in humbly, and tried to understand, by herself, what he was trying to do. What would he think of her when he saw her there that afternoon?
She was morbidly afraid of him and of his opinion. Caspar Brooke would have been as much hurt as astonished if he knew in what ogre-like light she regarded him.
Ethel joined them before they started for Macclesfield Buildings, and as rain was beginning to fall, Oliver insisted that they should take a cab. It was for his own sake, as Rosalind reminded him, rather than for theirs. He had a profound dislike of dirty streets, dirty people, unpleasant sights and sounds. And there were plenty of these to be encountered in the North London district to which they were bound that afternoon.
The three Londoners—for such they virtually were—could hardly refrain from laughing when they saw Lesley's horrified face as the cab drove up to the block of buildings in which the club was situated. "But this is a prison—a workhouse—a lunatic asylum!" she exclaimed. "People do not live here—do they—in this dreary place?"
Ah, me, and a dreary place it was! Three lofty blocks of building, all of the same drab hue, with iron-railed balconies outside the narrow windows, and a great court-yard in which a number of children romped and howled and shrieked in play: it was perhaps the most depressingly ugly bit of architecture that Lesley had ever seen. In vain her friends told her of the superior sanitary arrangements, the ventilation, the drainage, the pure water "laid on;" all she could do was to clasp her hand, and say, with positive tears in her bright eyes, "But why could it not all have been made more beautiful?" And indeed it is hard to say why not.
"Now we are going down into a coal hole," said Oliver, as he helped the ladies to alight. "At least it was once a coal hole. Yes, it was. These four rooms were used as storehouses for coals and vegetables until your father rented them: you will see what they look like now."
"Lesley is horrified," said Ethel, with a little laugh. "Not at the coal-hole," Lesley answered, trying also to be merry, "but at the ugliness of it all. Don't you think this kind of ugliness almost wicked?"
"Oliver thinks all ugliness wicked," said Mrs. Romaine, maliciously.
"Then we ought to be very good," said Ethel. But Oliver did not answer: he was looking at Lesley, whose face had grown pale.
"Are you tired?—are you ill?" he asked her, in the gentlest undertones. They were still picking their way over the muddy stones of the court-yards, and rough children ran up to them now and then, and clamored for a penny. "Is the sight of this place too much for you?"