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Updated: June 13, 2025
And all that had to be done had been done not by Hilda, but by Sarah Gailey the touchy and the competent. Hilda had done little but the humouring. And there sat Sarah Gailey, deracinated and captive, to prove how influential a person Hilda was!
"Here we are!" said George Cannon jauntily, as the carriage stopped in front of No. 59 Preston Street. But his jauntiness seemed factitious. The demeanour of all three was diffident and unnatural, for now had arrived the moment when George Cannon had to submit his going concern to the ordeal of inspection by the women, and especially by Sarah Gailey.
These elderly ladies shot almost roguishly out of the drawing-room, and by their smiles struck the descending party into immobility. "Oh! We saw you arrive, Mr. Cannon!" said the elder, shaking her head. "So this is Miss Gailey! Good afternoon, Miss Gailey! So pleased to make your acquaintance!" There was handshaking. Then it was Hilda's turn.
And Miss Gailey inspected her with the calm and omniscient detachment of a deity, and said to Caroline when she was gone that Florrie seemed a promising little thing with the 'makings of a good servant' in her. Afterwards the mistress recounted this judgment to Florrie, who was thereby apparently much impressed and encouraged in well-doing.
Sarah Gailey looked again up the stairs "I know you're in a temper and not responsible for what you say. But you'd better be careful." She spoke with elaborate haughty negligence. "Had I?" Louisa shrilled. "What I say is, what about his other wife? What about the old woman he married in Devonshire? Why, God bless me, Florrie was full of it couldn't talk about anything else in bed of a night!
Hilda ran down the steps; at the bottom another row of lamps defined the shore, and now she could hear the tide lapping ceaselessly amid the supporting ironwork of the pier. She at once descried the figure of Sarah Gailey in the gloom. The woman was moving towards the faintly white edge of the sea.
Miss Gailey, at any rate, recognized in the most scrupulous way that Hilda was an adult, and no longer a foal-legged pupil for dancing. "Well, he seems so set on it. He came round to see me about it yesterday morning, without any warning. And he was full of it! I told you how full he was of it, didn't I, Caroline? You know how he is when anything takes him."
But presently she discerned that the white foam was circling round Sarah's feet, and that Sarah was standing careless in the midst of it. And at last, timid and shaking with agitation, she ventured nearer and nearer. And Sarah heard her on the sand, and looked behind. "Miss Gailey!" she appealed in a trembling voice. Sarah made no response of any kind, and Hilda reached the edge of the foam.
But she was ready to do anything to save Sarah Gailey from the distress of one particular humiliation. With the whole of her volition she wanted to win. "Oh well!" he said. "Of course, if you take it so much to heart " A peculiar bright glance shot from his eyes the old glance that at once negligently asserted his power over her, and reassured her against his power.
Hilda, who also spoke without the local peculiarities, had been deprived of her Five Towns accent at Chetwynd's School, where the purest Kensingtonian was inculcated; but Miss Gailey had lost hers in Kensington itself so rumour said many years before. And now, in her declension, she was still perfect of speech.
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