sure it's wrong
to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can
see you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy"--
Mrs. Arbuthnot opened her mouth to protest--"and I--I've done nothing
but duties, things for other people, ever since I was a girl, and I
don't believe anybody loves me a bit--a bit--the b-better--and I long--
oh, I long--for something else--something else--"

Was she going to cry? Mrs. Arbuthnot became acutely
uncomfortable and sympathetic. She hoped she wasn't going to cry. Not
there. Not in that unfriendly room, with strangers coming and going.

But Mrs. Wilkins, after tugging agitatedly at a handkerchief that
wouldn't come out of her pocket, did succeed at last in merely
apparently blowing her nose with it, and then, blinking her eyes very
quickly once or twice, looked at Mrs. Arbuthnot with a quivering air of
half humble, half frightened apology, and smiled.

"Will you believe," she whispered, trying to steady her mouth,
evidently dreadfully ashamed of herself, "that I've never spoken to any
one before in my life like this? I can't think, I simply don't know,
what has come over me."

"It's the advertisement," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, nodding gravely.

"Yes," said Mrs. Wilkins, dabbing furtively at her eyes, "and us
both being so--"--she blew her nose again a little--"miserable."

Chapter 2

Of Course Mrs. Arbuthnot was not miserable--how could she be, she
asked herself, when God was taking care of her?--but she let that pass
for the moment unrepudiated, because of her conviction that here was
another fellow-creature in urgent need of her help; and not just boots
and blankets and better sanitary arrangements this time, but the more
delicate help of comprehension, of finding the exact right words.

The exact right words, she presently discovered, after trying
various ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to be
found in placing oneself unreservedly in God's hands--to meet all these
words Mrs. Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the moment
at least, till one had had more time, difficult to answer--the exact
right words were a suggestion that it would do no harm to answer the
advertisement. Non-committal. Mere inquiry. And what disturbed Mrs.
Arbuthnot about this suggestion was that she did not make it solely to
comfort Mrs. Wilkins; she made it because of her own strange longing
for the mediaeval castle.

Thi