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.
"And I know you by sight," went on Mrs. Wilkins, who, like all the shy, once she was started; lunged on, frightening herself to more and more speech by the sheer sound of what she had said last in her ears. "Every Sunday--I see you every Sunday in church--"
"In church?" echoed Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"And this seems such a wonderful thing--this advertisement about the wisteria--and--"
Mrs. Wilkins, who must have been at least thirty, broke off and wriggled in her chair with the movement of an awkward and embarrassed schoolgirl.
"It seems so wonderful," she went on in a kind of burst, "and--it is such a miserable day . . ."
And then she sat looking at Mrs. Arbuthnot with the eyes of an imprisoned dog.
"This poor thing," thought Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose life was spent in helping and alleviating, "needs advice."
She accordingly prepared herself patiently to give it.
"If you see me in church," she said, kindly and attentively, "I suppose you live in Hampstead too?"
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Wilkins. And she repeated, her head on its long thin neck drooping a little as if the recollection of Hampstead bowed her, "Oh yes."
"Where?" asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, who, when advice was needed, naturally first proceeded to collect the facts.
But Mrs. Wilkins, laying her hand softly and caressingly on the part of The Times where the advertisement was, as though the mere printed words of it were precious, only said, "Perhaps that is why this seems so wonderful."