She got up quickly.  Yes, she would write.  She would go and write to him at once.

But suppose—­

She paused.  Suppose he didn’t answer.  Suppose he didn’t even answer.

And she sat down again to think a little longer.

In these hesitations did Rose spend most of the second week.

Then there was Mrs. Fisher.  Her restlessness increased that second week.  It increased to such an extent that she might just as well not have had her private sitting-room at all, for she could no longer sit.  Not for ten minutes together could Mrs. Fisher sit.  And added to the restlessness, as the days of the second week proceeded on their way, she had a curious sensation, which worried her, of rising sap.  She knew the feeling, because she had sometimes had it in childhood in specially swift springs, when the lilacs and the syringes seemed to rush out into blossom in a single night, but it was strange to have it again after over fifty years.  She would have liked to remark on the sensation to some one, but she was ashamed.  It was such an absurd sensation at her age.  Yet oftener and oftener, and every day more and more, did Mrs. Fisher have a ridiculous feeling as if she were presently going to burgeon.

Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down.  Burgeon, indeed.  She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend.  She was not in legend.  She knew perfectly what was due to herself.  Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was—­the feeling that presently, that at any moment now, she might crop out all green.

Mrs. Fisher was upset.  There were many things she disliked more than anything else, and one was when the elderly imagined they felt young and behaved accordingly.  Of course they only imagined it, they were only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results.  She herself had grown old as people should grow old—­steadily and firmly.  No interruptions, no belated after—­glows and spasmodic returns.  If, after all these years, she were now going to be deluded into some sort of unsuitable breaking-out, how humiliating.

Indeed she was thankful, that second week, that Kate Lumley was not there.  It would be most unpleasant, should anything different occur in her behaviour, to have Kate looking on.  Kate had known her all her life.  She felt she could let herself go—­here Mrs. Fisher frowned at the book she was vainly trying to concentrate on, for where did that expression come from?—­much less painfully before strangers than before an old friend.  Old friends, reflected Mrs. Fisher, who hoped she was reading, compare one constantly with what one used to be.  They are always doing it if one develops.  They are surprised at development.  They hark back; they expect motionlessness after, say, fifty, to the end of one’s days.