"Are we going to your chambers, Gerald?"
"That is another foolish question, Winny! My chambers are hardly large enough for me. I have taken lodgings for you this morning; the best I could at a minute's notice. London is full of drawbacks and inconveniences: if you have to put up with some, you must remember that you have brought them on yourself."
"Will there be any dinner for us?" asked Winny timidly. "The poor little girls are very hungry."
"You are going to Mrs. Hamish Channing's until tonight. I daresay she'll have dinner ready for you. Afterwards you can call at the rooms, and settle with the landlady what you will want got in."
The change in Mrs. Yorke's face was like magic; a glad brightness overspread it. Once when she was ill in lodgings at Helstonleigh, before her husband removed her into Gloucestershire, her eldest child being then an infant, Hamish Channing's wife had been wonderfully kind to her. To hear that she was going to her seemed like a haven of refuge in this wilderness of a London, which she had never until now visited.
"Oh, thank you, Gerald. I am so glad."
"I suppose you have brought some money with you," said Gerald.
"I think I have about sixteen shillings," she answered, beginning to turn out her purse.
"Where's the rest?
"What rest?"