Cannon might have to say
concerning the Calder Street property.

In a minute Mr. Cannon was resplendently sitting down to the table with
them, and rubbing his friendly hands, and admitting that he should not
refuse a cup of tea if pressed. And Hilda received her mother's sharp
instructions to get a cup and saucer from the sideboard and a spoon from
the drawer. She bore these to the table like a handmaid, but like a
delicate and superior handmaid, and it pleased her to constitute herself
a delicate and superior handmaid. Mr. Cannon sat next to her mother, and
Hilda put down the tinkling cup and saucer on the white cloth between
them; and as she did so Mr. Cannon turned and thanked her with a
confidential smile, to which she responded. They were not now employer
and employee, but exclusively in the social world; nevertheless, their
business relations made an intimacy which it was piquant to feel in the
home. Moreover, Sarah Gailey was opposite to them, and Hilda could not
keep out of her dark eyes the intelligence: "If she is here, if you are
all amicable together, it is due to me." Delicious and somehow perilous
secret!... Going back to her seat, she arranged more safely the vast
overcoat which he had thrown carelessly down on her mother's rocking-
chair. It was inordinately heavy, and would have outweighed a dozen of
her skimpy little jackets; she, who would have been lost in it like a
cat in a rug, enjoyed the thought of the force of the creature capable
of wearing it lightly for a garment. Withal the rough, soft surface of
it was agreeable to the hand. Out of one of the immense pockets hung the
end of a coloured silk muffler, filmy as anything that she herself wore.

Then they were all definitely seated, and Mr. Cannon accepted his tea
from the hand of Mrs. Lessways. The whiteness of his linen, the new
smartness of his suit, the elegance and gallantry of his gestures--these
phenomena incited the women to a responsive emulation; they were
something which it was a feminine duty to live up to. Archness reigned,
especially between the hostess and the caller. Hilda answered to the
mood. And Sarah Gailey, though she said little and never finished a
sentence, did her best to answer to it by noddings and nervous
appreciative smiles, and swift turnings of the head from one to another.
When Mr. Cannon and Mrs. Lessways, in half a dozen serious words
interjected among the archness, had adversely settled the fate of a
whole fam