To begin with, the idea of leaving the house empty seemed to Constance a mad idea.  The house had never been left empty.  And then—­going for a holiday in April!  Constance had never been for a holiday except in the month of August.  No!  The project was beset with difficulties and dangers which could not be overcome nor provided against.  For example, “We can’t come back to a dirty house,” said Constance.  “And we can’t have a strange servant coming here before us.”  To which Sophia had replied:  “Then what shall you do?” And Constance, after prodigious reflection on the frightful pass to which destiny had brought her, had said that she supposed she would have to manage with a charwoman until Rose’s advent.  She asked Sophia if she remembered old Maggie.  Sophia, of course, perfectly remembered.  Old Maggie was dead, as well as the drunken, amiable Hollins, but there was a young Maggie (wife of a bricklayer) who went out charing in the spare time left from looking after seven children.  The more Constance meditated upon young Maggie, the more was she convinced that young Maggie would meet the case.  Constance felt she could trust young Maggie.

This expression of trust in Maggie was Constance’s undoing.  Why should they not go away, and arrange with Maggie to come to the house a few days before their return, to clean and ventilate?  The weight of reason overbore Constance.  She yielded unwillingly, but she yielded.  It was the mention of Buxton that finally moved her.  She knew Buxton.  Her old landlady at Buxton was dead, and Constance had not visited the place since before Samuel’s death; nevertheless its name had a reassuring sound to her ears, and for sciatica its waters and climate were admitted to be the best in England.  Gradually Constance permitted herself to be embarked on this perilous enterprise of shutting up the house for twenty-five days.  She imparted the information to Amy, who was astounded.  Then she commenced upon her domestic preparations.  She wrapped Samuel’s Family Bible in brown paper; she put Cyril’s straw-framed copy of Sir Edwin Landseer away in a drawer, and she took ten thousand other precautions.  It was grotesque; it was farcical; it was what you please.  And when, with the cab at the door and the luggage on the cab, and the dogs chained together, and Maria Critchlow waiting on the pavement to receive the key, Constance put the key into the door on the outside, and locked up the empty house, Constance’s face was tragic with innumerable apprehensions.  And Sophia felt that she had performed a miracle.  She had.

On the whole the sisters were well received in the hotel, though they were not at an age which commands popularity.  In the criticism which was passed upon them—­the free, realistic and relentless criticism of private hotels—­Sophia was at first set down as overbearing.  But in a few days this view was modified, and Sophia rose in esteem.  The fact was that Sophia’s behaviour changed