"Well, you've got your way!" said Mrs. Lessways, with a certain grim, disdainful cheerfulness, from which benevolence was not quite absent. The drastic treatment accorded to her cold seemed to have done it good. At any rate she had not resumed the flannel petticoat, and the nasal symptoms were much less pronounced.
"Got my way?" Hilda repeated, at a loss and newly apprehensive.
Mother and daughter were setting tea. Florrie had been doing very well, but she was not yet quite equal to her situation, and the mistresses were now performing her lighter duties while she changed from the offensive drudge to the neat parlour-maid. Throughout the afternoon Hilda had avoided her mother's sight; partly because she wanted to be alone (without knowing why), and partly because she was afraid lest Mr. Cannon, as a member of the older generation, might have betrayed her to her mother. This fear was not very genuine, though she pretended that it was and enjoyed playing with it: as if she really desired a catastrophe for the outcome of her adventure. She had only come downstairs in response to her mother's direct summons, and instantly on seeing her she had known that Mr. Cannon was not a traitor. Which knowledge somehow rendered her gay in spite of herself. So that, what with this gaiety, and the stimulation produced in Mrs. Lessways by the visit of Mr. Cannon, and the general household relief at the obvious fact that Florrie would rather more than 'do,' the atmosphere around the tinkling tea-table in the half-light was decidedly pleasant.
Nevertheless the singular turn of Mrs. Lessways' phrase,--"You've got your way,"--had startled the guilty Hilda.
"Mr. Cannon's going to see to the collecting of the Calder Street rents," explained Mrs. Lessways. "So I hope you're satisfied, miss."
Hilda was aware of self-consciousness.
"Yes, you may well colour up!" Mrs. Lessways pursued, genial but malicious. "You're as pleased as Punch, and you're saying to yourself you've made your old mother give way to ye again! And so you needn't tell me!"
"I thought," said Hilda, with all possible prim worldliness,--"I thought I heard him saying something about buying the property?"
Mrs. Lessways laughed, sceptically, confidently, as one who could not be deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton, but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of perceptive shrewdness that occasionally cropped out and made all Hilda's critical philosophy seem school-girlish.) "Do you think I don't know George Cannon? He came here o' purpose to get that rent-collecting. Well, he's got it, and he's welcome to it, for I doubt not he'll do it a sight better than poor Mr. Skellorn! But he needn't hug himself that he's been too clever for me, because he hasn't. I gave him the rent-collecting because I thought I would!... Buy! He's no more got a good customer for Calder Street than he's got a good customer for this slop-bowl!"
Hilda resented this casual detraction of a being who had so deeply impressed her. And moreover she was convinced that her mother, secretly very flattered and delighted by the visit, was adopting a derisive attitude in order to 'show off' before her daughter. Parents are thus ingenuous! But she was so shocked and sneaped that she found it more convenient to say nothing.