"If you knew whom you were talking to--!" With what pride, masked by careful indifference, she would hand the copy of the _Chronicle_ to her mother! Her mother would exclaim "Bless us!" and spend a day or two in conning the thing, making singular discoveries in it at short intervals.
IV It was not until she had reached Euston, and driven through a tumultuous and shabby thoroughfare to King's Cross, and taken another ticket, and installed herself in another train, that Hilda began to feel suddenly, like an abyss opening beneath her strength, the lack of food.

Meticulous in her clerical duties, and in many minor mechanical details of her personal daily existence, she was capable of singular negligences concerning matters which the heroic part of her despised and which did not immediately bear on a great purpose in hand.

Thus, in her carelessness, she found herself with less than two shillings in her pocket after paying for the ticket to Hornsey.

She thought, grimly resigned: "Never heed! I shall manage.

In half an hour I shall be there, and my anxiety will be at an end." The train, almost empty, waited forlornly in a forlorn and empty part of the huge, resounding ochreish station.