tedious banality--and ignored.

In less than a minute Hilda, hatted and jacketed and partially gloved,
was crossing the garden. She felt most miraculously happy and hopeful,
and she was full of irrational gratitude to Alicia, as though Alicia
were a benefactor! The change in her mood seemed magic in its swiftness.
If Janet, with calm, cryptic face, had not been watching her from the
doorway, she might have danced on the gravel.

CHAPTER V
THURSDAY AFTERNOON

I

She was walking with Edwin Clayhanger up Duck Bank on the way to Bursley
railway station. A simple errand and promenade,--and yet she felt
herself to be steeped in the romance of an adventure! The adventure had
surprisingly followed upon the discovery that Alicia had been quite
wrong. "Clayhangers are bound to have a Bradshaw," the confident Alicia
had said. But Clayhangers happened not to have a Bradshaw. Edwin was
alone in the stationery shop, save for the assistant. He said that his
father was indisposed. And whereas the news that Clayhangers had no
Bradshaw left Hilda perfectly indifferent, the news that old Darius
Clayhanger was indisposed and absent produced in her a definite feeling
of gladness. Edwin had decided that the most likely place to search for
a Bradshaw was the station, and he had offered to escort her to the
station. Nothing could have been more natural, and at the same time more
miraculous.

The sun was palely shining upon dry, clean pavements and upon roads
juicy with black mud. And in the sunshine Hilda was very happy. It was
nothing to her that she was in quest of a Bradshaw because she had just
received an ominous telegram urgently summoning her to Brighton. She was
obliviously happy. Every phenomenon that attracted her notice
contributed to her felicity. Thus she took an eager joy in the sun. And
a marked improvement in Edwin's cold really delighted her. She was
dominated by the intimate conviction: "He loves me!" Which conviction
excited her dormant pride, and made her straighten her shoulders. She
benevolently condescended towards Janet. After all Janet, with every
circumstance in her favour, had not known how to conquer Edwin
Clayhanger. After all she, Hilda, possessed some mysterious
characteristic more potent than the elegance and the goodness of Janet
Orgreave. She scorned her former self-deprecations, and reproached her
own lack of faith: "I am I!" That was the summary of her mood. As for
her attitude to Edwin Clayha