"Oh yes, she is!" Hilda agreed, with an exaggerated emphasis that showed a lack of conviction. Indeed, she had never thought of her mother as a very shrewd lady.
Mr. Cannon continued to smile in silence upon the shrewdness of Mrs. Lessways, giving little appreciative movements of the diaphragm, drawing in his lips and by consequence pushing out his cheeks like a child's; and his eyes were all the time saying lightly: "Still, I managed her!" And while this pleasant intimate silence persisted, the noises of the market-place made themselves prominent, quite agreeably--in particular the hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere was different from that of the first interview. And none knew! And she alone had brought it all about by a simple caprice!
"I was fine and startled when I saw you at our door, Mr. Cannon!" she said.
He might have said, "Were you? You didn't show it." She was half expecting him to say some such thing. But he became reflective, and began: "Well, you see--" and then hesitated.
"You didn't tell me you thought of calling."
"Well," he proceeded at last--and she could not be sure whether he was replying to her or not--"I was pretty nearly ready to buy that Calder Street property. And I thought I'd talk that over with your mother first! It just happened to make a good beginning, you see." He spoke with all the flattering charm of the confidential.
Hilda flushed. Under her mother's suggestion, she had been misjudging him. He had not been guilty of mere scheming. She was profoundly glad. The act of apology to him, performed in her own mind, gave her a curious delight.
"I wish she would sell," said Hilda, to whom the ownership of a slum was obnoxious.
"Very soon your consent would be necessary to any sale."
"Really!" she exclaimed, agreeably flattered, but scarcely surprised by this information. "I should consent quick enough! I can't bear to walk down the street!"