"What name?"
She had not expected this. "I suppose I shall have to tell him!" she said to herself, and aloud: "Lessways."
"Oh! Ah!" exclaimed the man. "Bless us! Yes!" It was as if he had said: "Of course it's Lessways! And don't I know all about you!" And Hilda was overwhelmed by the sense of the enormity of the folly which she was committing.
The man swung half round on his stool, and seized the end of an india-rubber tube which hung at the side of the battered and littered desk, just under a gas-jet. He spoke low, like a conspirator, into the mouthpiece of the tube. "Miss Lessways--to see you, sir." Then very quickly he clapped the tube to his ear and listened. And then he put it to his mouth again and repeated: "Lessways." Hilda was agonized.
"I'll ask ye to step this way, miss," said the man, slipping off his stool. At the same time he put a long inky penholder, which he had been holding in his wrinkled right hand, between his teeth.
"Never," thought Hilda as she followed the clerk, in a whirl of horrible misgivings, "never have I done anything as mad as this before! I'm under twenty-one!"
III
There she was at last, seated in front of a lawyer in a lawyer's office--her ladyship consulting her own lawyer! It seemed incredible! A few minutes ago she had been at home, and now she was in a world unfamiliar and alarming. Perhaps it was a pity that her mother had unsuspectingly put the scheme into her head!
However, the deed was done. Hilda generally acted first and reflected afterwards. She was frightened, but rather by the unknown than by anything she could define.
"You've come about the property?" said Mr. Cannon amiably, in a matter-of-fact tone.