des, they need sympathy more; they have fewer
comforts. I should not care to give up attending my poor people for the
sake of the idle rich."

The set phraseology of the country rectory recurred to Lady
Meadowcroft--"our poorer brethren," and so forth. "Oh, of course," she
answered, with the mechanical acquiescence such women always give to
moral platitudes. "One must do one's best for the poor, I know--for
conscience' sake and all that; it's our duty, and we all try hard to do
it. But they're so terribly ungrateful! Don't you think so? Do you know,
Miss Wade, in my father's parish--"

Hilda cut her short with a sunny smile--half contemptuous toleration,
half genuine pity. "We are all ungrateful," she said; "but the poor, I
think, the least so. I'm sure the gratitude I've often had from my poor
women at St. Nathaniel's has made me sometimes feel really ashamed of
myself. I had done so little--and they thanked me so much for it."

"Which only shows," Lady Meadowcroft broke in, "that one ought always to
have a LADY to nurse one."

"Ca marche!" Hilda said to me, with a quiet smile, a few minutes
after, when her ladyship had disappeared in her fluffy robe down the
companion-ladder.

"Yes, ca marche," I answered. "In an hour or two you will have succeeded
in landing your chaperon. And what is most amusing, landed her, too,
Hilda, just by being yourself--letting her see frankly the actual truth
of what you think and feel about her and about everyone!"

"I could not do otherwise," Hilda answered, growing grave. "I must be
myself, or die for it. My method of angling consists in showing myself
just as I am. You call me an actress, but I am not really one; I am only
a woman who can use her personality for her own purposes. If I go
with Lady Meadowcroft, it will be a mutual advantage. I shall really
sympathise with her for I can see the poor thing is devoured with
nervousness."

"But do you think you will be able to stand her?" I asked.

"Oh, dear, yes. She's not a bad little thing, au fond, when you get to
know her. It is society that has spoilt her. She would have made a nice,
helpful, motherly body if she'd married the curate."

As we neared Bombay, conversation grew gradually more and more Indian;
it always does under similar circumstances. A sea voyage is half
retrospect, half prospect; it has no personal identity. You leave
Liverpool for New York at the English standpoint, and are full of what
you did in London or