le and the wisteria?" she
heard herself asking.

Naturally Mrs. Arbuthnot was surprised; but she was not half so
much surprised as Mrs. Wilkins was at herself for asking.

Mrs. Arbuthnot had not yet to her knowledge set eyes on the
shabby, lank, loosely-put-together figure sitting opposite her, with
its small freckled face and big grey eyes almost disappearing under a
smashed-down wet-weather hat, and she gazed at her a moment without
answering. She was reading about the mediaeval castle and the
wisteria, or rather had read about it ten minutes before, and since
then had been lost in dreams--of light, of colour, of fragrance, of the
soft lapping of the sea among little hot rocks . . .

"Why do you ask me that?" she said in her grave voice, for her
training of and by the poor had made her grave and patient.

Mrs. Wilkins flushed and looked excessively shy and frightened.
"Oh, only because I saw it too, and I thought perhaps--I thought
somehow--" she stammered.

Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, her mind being used to getting people
into lists and divisions, from habit considered, as she gazed
thoughtfully at Mrs. Wilkins, under what heading, supposing she had to
classify her, she could most properly be put.

"And I know you by sight," went on Mrs. Wilkins, who, like all
the shy, once she was started; lunged on, frightening herself to more
and more speech by the sheer sound of what she had said last in her
ears. "Every Sunday--I see you every Sunday in church--"

"In church?" echoed Mrs. Arbuthnot.

"And this seems such a wonderful thing--this advertisement about
the wisteria--and--"

Mrs. Wilkins, who must have been at least thirty, broke off and
wriggled in her chair with the movement of an awkward and embarrassed
schoolgirl.

"It seems so wonderful," she went on in a kind of burst, "and--it
is such a miserable day . . ."

And then she sat looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot with the eyes of an
imprisoned dog.

"This poor thing," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose life was spent
in helping and alleviating, "needs advice."

She accordingly prepared herself patiently to give it.

"If you see me in church," she said, kindly and attentively, "I
suppose you live in Hampstead too?"

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Wilkins. And she repeated, her head on its
long thin neck drooping a little as if the recollection of Hampstead
bowed her, "Oh yes."

"Where?" asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, when advice was needed,
naturally first proceeded to