. .
Suddenly Mrs. Wilkins found herself leaning across the table.
"Are you reading about the mediaeval castle and the wisteria?" she
heard herself asking.
Naturally Mrs. Arbuthnot was surprised; but she was not half so
much surprised as Mrs. Wilkins was at herself for asking.
Mrs. Arbuthnot had not yet to her knowledge set eyes on the
shabby, lank, loosely-put-together figure sitting opposite her, with
its small freckled face and big grey eyes almost disappearing under a
smashed-down wet-weather hat, and she gazed at her a moment without
answering. She was reading about the mediaeval castle and the
wisteria, or rather had read about it ten minutes before, and since
then had been lost in dreams--of light, of colour, of fragrance, of the
soft lapping of the sea among little hot rocks . . .
"Why do you ask me that?" she said in her grave voice, for her
training of and by the poor had made her grave and patient.
Mrs. Wilkins flushed and looked excessively shy and frightened.
"Oh, only because I saw it too, and I thought perhaps--I thought
somehow--" she stammered.
Whereupon Mrs. Arbuthnot, her mind being used to getting people
into lists and divisions, from habit considered, as she gazed
thoughtfully at Mrs. Wilkins, under what heading, supposing she had to
classify her, she could most properly be put.
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