“Of course,” she said in a low voice, almost as if she were afraid the vicar and the Savings Bank were listening, “it would be most beautiful—­most beautiful—­”

“Even if it were wrong,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “it would only be for a month.”

“That—­” began Mrs. Arbuthnot, quite clear as to the reprehensibleness of such a point of view; but Mrs. Wilkins stopped her before she could finish.

“Anyhow,” said Mrs. Wilkins, stopping her, “I’m sure it’s wrong to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable.  And I can see you’ve been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy”—­ Mrs. Arbuthnot opened her mouth to protest—­“and I—­I’ve done nothing but duties, things for other people, ever since I was a girl, and I don’t believe anybody loves me a bit—­a bit—­the b-better—­and I long—­ oh, I long—­for something else—­something else—­”

Was she going to cry?  Mrs. Arbuthnot became acutely uncomfortable and sympathetic.  She hoped she wasn’t going to cry.  Not there.  Not in that unfriendly room, with strangers coming and going.

But Mrs. Wilkins, after tugging agitatedly at a handkerchief that wouldn’t come out of her pocket, did succeed at last in merely apparently blowing her nose with it, and then, blinking her eyes very quickly once or twice, looked at Mrs. Arbuthnot with a quivering air of half humble, half frightened apology, and smiled.

“Will you believe,” she whispered, trying to steady her mouth, evidently dreadfully ashamed of herself, “that I’ve never spoken to any one before in my life like this?  I can’t think, I simply don’t know, what has come over me.”

“It’s the advertisement,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, nodding gravely.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wilkins, dabbing furtively at her eyes, “and us both being so—­“—­she blew her nose again a little—­“miserable.”

Chapter 2

Of Course Mrs. Arbuthnot was not miserable—­how could she be, she asked herself, when God was taking care of her?—­but she let that pass for the moment unrepudiated, because of her conviction that here was another fellow-creature in urgent need of her help; and not just boots and blankets and better sanitary arrangements this time, but the more delicate help of comprehension, of finding the exact right words.

The exact right words, she presently discovered, after trying various ones about living for others, and prayer, and the peace to be found in placing oneself unreservedly in God’s hands—­to meet all these words Mrs. Wilkins had other words, incoherent and yet, for the moment at least, till one had had more time, difficult to answer—­the exact right words were a suggestion that it would do no harm to answer the advertisement.  Non-committal.  Mere inquire.  And what disturbed Mrs. Arbuthnot about this suggestion was that she did not make it solely to comfort Mrs. Wilkins; she made it because of her own strange longing for the mediaeval castle.