The sun gave no promise of shining, and a bleak wind, tossing the rubbish of the gutters into little whirlpools, made pedestrianism exceedingly unpleasant. She was dismayed to find on how long a journey she was bound; she arrived at the tram-terminus already tired, and then learnt that she was not half-way to Finchley. It was nothing but a name to her, and steadily trudging along a road that extended itself before her eternally she began to fear that she would never reach her goal at all. To add to the discomfort, it was snowing slightly now, and she grew less sanguine with every hundred yards. The vision of the smiling lady, the buoyancy of her own glib sentences, faded from her, and the thought of the utter abjectness that would come of refusal made the salvation of acceptance appear much too wonderful to occur.
When she reached it, "Trebartha" proved to be a stunted villa in red brick. It was one of a row, each of the other stunted villas being similarly endowed with a name befitting, a domain; and suspense catching discouragement from the most extraneous details, Mary's heart sank as the housemaid disclosed the badly-lighted passage.
She was ushered into the sitting-room; and the woman who entered presently had been suggested by it. She seemed the natural complement of the haggard prints, of the four cumbersome chairs in a line against the wall, of the family Bible on the crochet tablecover. She wore silk, dark and short—plain, except for three narrow bands of velvet at the hem. She wore a gold watch-chain hanging round her neck, garlanded over her portly bosom. She said she was the invalid lady's married daughter, and her tone implied a consciousness of that higher merit which the woman whose father has left her comfortably off feels over the woman whose father hasn't.
"You've called about my mother's advertisement for a companion?" she said.
"Yes; I've had a long experience of nursing. I think I should be able to do all you require."
"Have you ever lived as companion?"
"No," said Mary, "I have never done that, but—but I think I'm companionable; I don't think I'm difficult to get on with."
"What was your—won't you sit down?—what was your last place?"
Mary moistened her lips.
"I am," she said, "rather awkwardly situated. I may as well tell you at once that I am a stranger here, and—do you know—I find that's a great bar in the way of my getting employment? Not being known, I've, of course, no friends I can refer people to, and—well, people always seem to think the fact of being a stranger in a city is rather a discreditable thing. I have found that! They do." She looked for a gleam of response in the stolid countenance, but it was as void of expression as the furniture. "As I say, I have had a lengthy experience of nursing; I—it sounds conceited—but I should be exceedingly useful. It's just the thing I am fitted for."