formed by an expression of alarm.

"Are you ill, Hilda?" Janet demanded. "Sit down."

"You're frightfully pale," said Alicia eagerly.

Hilda sat down.

"No, no," she said. "It was the pattern of the wall-paper that made me
feel dizzy." And, for the moment, she did honestly believe that the
pattern of the wall-paper had, in some inexplicable manner, upset her.
"I'm all right now."

The dizziness passed as suddenly as it had supervened. Janet held some
ineffectual salts to her nose.

"I'm perfectly well," insisted Hilda.

"How funny!" Alicia grinned.

Calmly Hilda opened the telegram, which read: "Please come at once.--
GAILEY."

She gave the telegram to Janet in silence.

"What can be the matter?" Janet asked, with unreserved, loving
solicitude. The cloud which had hung between the two enthusiastic
friends was dissipated in a flash.

"I haven't an idea," said Hilda, touched. "Unless it's those shares!"
She had briefly told Janet about the Hotel Continental Limited.

"Shall you go?"

Hilda nodded. Never again would she ignore an urgent telegram, though
she did not believe that this telegram had any real importance. She
attributed it to Sarah's increasing incompetence and hysterical
foolishness.

"I wonder whether I can get on to Brighton to-night if I take the six
train?" Hilda asked, and to herself: "Can it have anything to do with
George?"

Alicia, endowed with authority, went in search of a Bradshaw. But the
quest was fruitless. In the Five Towns the local time-table, showing the
connections with London, suffices for the citizen, and the breast-pocket
of no citizen is complete without it.

"Clayhangers are bound to have a Bradshaw," cried Alicia, breathless
with running about the house.

"Of course they are," Janet agreed.

"I'll walk down there now," said Hilda, with extraordinary promptitude.
"It won't take five minutes."

"I'd go," said Alicia, "only I should be late for school."

"Shall I send some one down?" Janet suggested. "You might be taken dizzy
again."

"No, thanks," Hilda replied deliberately. "I'll go--myself. There's
nothing wrong with me at all."

"You'll have to be sharp over it," said Alicia pertly. "Don't forget
it's Thursday. They shut up at two, and it's not far off two now."

"I'm going this very minute," said Hilda.

"And I'm going this very second!" Alicia retorted.

They all three left Janet's bedroom; the new cloak cast over a chair-
back, was degraded into a