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Lessways was continuing to make everything in the house the private property of Florrie, when Hilda interrupted her about the handkerchief, and afterwards with an exhortation to beware of the dampness of the floor, which exhortation Mrs. Lessways faintly resented; whereupon Hilda left the kitchen; it was always imprudent to come between Mrs. Lessways and a new servant.
Nine-tenths of her mother's conversation was concerned with the business of domesticity and withal Mrs. Lessways took the business more lightly than most! There was an impatient knock at the front door, rare phenomenon, but not unknown. Mrs. Lessways cried out thickly from the folds of her flannel petticoat: "Hilda, just see who that is, will you?... knocking like that! Florrie can't come."
"Mr. Cannon's going to see to the collecting of the Calder Street rents," explained Mrs. Lessways. "So I hope you're satisfied, miss." Hilda was aware of self-consciousness. "Yes, you may well colour up!" Mrs. Lessways pursued, genial but malicious. "You're as pleased as Punch, and you're saying to yourself you've made your old mother give way to ye again! And so you needn't tell me!"
Lessways took Florrie in order to save her from slavery. The slim child was pretty, with graceful and eager movements, and certainly a rapid comprehension. Her grey eyes sparkled, and her brown hair was coquettishly tied up, rather in the manner of a horse's tail on May Day.
Lessways' thin, wrinkled face, bordered by her untidy but still black and glossy hair, was upturned from below in an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself unwatched.
Although the hero, Edwin Clayhanger, is not a strong personality, Bennett's art makes us keenly interested in Edwin's simple, impressionable nature, in his eagerness for life, and in his experiences as a young dreamer, lover, son, and brother. Hilda Lessways , a companion volume to Clayhanger, but a story of less power, continues the history of the same characters.
"I was only getting my apron." From a reticule on the table she drew forth a small black satin apron on which was embroidered in filoselle a spray of moss-roses. It was extremely elegant much more so than Mrs. Lessways' though not in quite the latest style of fashionable aprons; not being edible, it had probably been long preserved in a wardrobe, on the chance of just such an occasion as this.
"I don't know anything about refreshments at dances," said Mrs. Lessways, "but I do know what your housekeeping is, Sarah!" "Well, that's what George says!" Sarah simpered. "He says he never had such meals and such attention as that year he lived with me." "I'm sure he's been sorry many a time he ever left you!" exclaimed Caroline. "Many and many a time!"
Lessways warmly deprecated any apology for inexactitude, and wiped her sympathetic eyes. "It's all over with father," Mrs. Grant resumed. "Doctor hinted to me quiet-like as he'd never leave his bed again. He's laid himself down for the rest of his days.... And he'd been warned! He'd had warnings. But there!..." Mrs.
But when he discovers Hilda, and Hilda's son, and Hilda's misery Hilda, "with her passion for Victor Hugo, obliged by circumstances to polish a brass door-plate surreptitiously at night!"-with her, love, passion, pity, intensity of living come back to him. It is interesting to turn from Clayhanger to the story of Hilda Lessways. This story has not quite the distinctive note which Mr.
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