"Well, I'll tell you. Hotels!"
"Hotels?" She was perfectly nonplussed.
"Hotels! There'll be more money and more fun to be got out of hotels, soon, than out of any other kind of enterprise in the world. You should see those hotels that are going up in London! They'd give you a start, and no mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in a comically naïve tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by bit! Now, if it hadn't been for Sarah--and that boarding-house--"
He was using his straw hat as a fan. With an unexpected and almost childlike gesture he suddenly threw the hat up on to the rack above his head, "How's that?"
"What a boy he is, after all!" thought Hilda sympathetically, wondering why in the midst of all her manifold astonishment she felt so light-hearted and gay.
"Funny parcel you've got up there!" he idly observed, glancing from one rack to the other.
The parcel contained Mrs. Orgreave's generous conception of a repast proper to be eaten in a train in place of high tea. He helped her to eat it.
As the train approached London he resumed his manhood. And he was impeccably adult as he conducted her from Euston to King's Cross, and put her into a train in a corner of the station that the summer twilight had already taken possession of.
III
Late at night Hilda sat with Sarah Gailey in the landlady's small bedroom at the Cedars. It was lighted by a lamp, because the builder of the house, hating excess, had thought fit not to carry gas-pipes higher than the first floor. A large but old bedstead filled half the floor space. On the shabby dressing-table a pile of bills and various papers lay near the lamp. Clothes were hung behind the door, and a vague wisp of muslin moved slightly in the warm draught from the tiny open window. There were two small cane-chairs, enamelled, on which the women sat, close to each other, both incommoded by the unwholesome sultriness of the only chamber that could be spared for the private use of the house-mistress. This small bedroom was Sarah Gailey's home; its amenities were the ultimate nightly reward of her labours. If George Cannon had obtained possession of the Cedars as an occupation for Sarah, this room and Sarah's pleasure therein were the sole justification of the entire mansion.