t morning to the task
before her. The shock with an unsympathetic world had a sobering effect
on her. For once, her industry surpassed her daughter's. Katharine could
not reduce the world to that particular perspective in which Harriet
Martineau, for instance, was a figure of solid importance, and possessed
of a genuine relationship to this figure or to that date. Singularly
enough, the sharp call of the telephone-bell still echoed in her ear,
and her body and mind were in a state of tension, as if, at any moment,
she might hear another summons of greater interest to her than the whole
of the nineteenth century. She did not clearly realize what this call
was to be; but when the ears have got into the habit of listening, they
go on listening involuntarily, and thus Katharine spent the greater part
of the morning in listening to a variety of sounds in the back streets
of Chelsea. For the first time in her life, probably, she wished that
Mrs. Hilbery would not keep so closely to her work. A quotation from
Shakespeare would not have come amiss. Now and again she heard a sigh
from her mother's table, but that was the only proof she gave of her
existence, and Katharine did not think of connecting it with the square
aspect of her own position at the table, or, perhaps, she would have
thrown her pen down and told her mother the reason of her restlessness.
The only writing she managed to accomplish in the course of the morning
was one letter, addressed to her cousin, Cassandra Otway--a rambling
letter, long, affectionate, playful and commanding all at once. She bade
Cassandra put her creatures in the charge of a groom, and come to
them for a week or so. They would go and hear some music together.
Cassandra's dislike of rational society, she said, was an affectation
fast hardening into a prejudice, which would, in the long run, isolate
her from all interesting people and pursuits. She was finishing the
sheet when the sound she was anticipating all the time actually struck
upon her ears. She jumped up hastily, and slammed the door with a
sharpness which made Mrs. Hilbery start. Where was Katharine off to? In
her preoccupied state she had not heard the bell.

The alcove on the stairs, in which the telephone was placed, was
screened for privacy by a curtain of purple velvet. It was a pocket for
superfluous possessions, such as exist in most houses which harbor the
wreckage of three generations. Prints of great-uncles, famed for their