She said to herself: "I'd better get the thing over before I buy the thread. I should never be able to stand Miss Dayson's finicking! I should scream out!" But the next instant, with her passion for proving to herself how strong she could be, she added: "Well, I just _will_ buy the thread first!" And she went straight into Dayson's little fancy shop, which was full of counter and cardboard boxes and Miss Dayson, and stayed therein for at least five minutes, emerging with a miraculously achieved leisureliness. A few doors away was a somewhat new building, of three storeys--the highest in the Square. The ground floor was an ironmongery; it comprised also a side entrance, of which the door was always open. This side entrance showed a brass-plate, "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor." And the wire-blinds of the two windows of the first floor also bore the words: "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor. Q. Karkeek, Solicitor." The queerness of the name had attracted Hilda's attention several years earlier, when the signs were fresh. It was an accident that she had noticed it; she had not noticed the door-plates or the wire-blinds of other solicitors. She did not know Mr. Q. Karkeek by sight, nor even whether he was old or young, married or single, agreeable or repulsive. The side entrance gave directly on to a long flight of naked stairs, and up these stairs Hilda climbed into the unknown, towards the redoubtable and the perilous. "I'm bound to be seen," she said to herself, "but I don't care, and I _don't_ care!" At the top of the stairs was a passage, at right angles, and then a glazed door with the legend in black letters, "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor," and two other doors mysteriously labelled "Private." She opened the glazed door, and saw a dirty middle-aged man on a stool, and she said at once to him, in a harsh, clear, deliberate voice, without giving herself time to reflect: "I want to see Mr. Karkeek." The man stared at her sourly, as if bewildered. She said to herself: "I shan't be able to stand this excitement much longer." "You can't see Mr. Karkeek," said the man. "Mr. Karkeek's detained at Hanbridge County Court. But if you're in such a hurry like, you'd better see Mr. Cannon. It's Mr. Cannon as they generally do see. Who d'ye come from, miss?" "Come from?" Hilda repeated, unnerved. "What name?" She had not expected this. "I suppose I shall have to tell him!" she said to herself, and aloud: "Lessways." "Oh! Ah!" exclaimed the man. "Bless us! Yes!" It was as if he had said: "Of course it's Lessways! And don't I know all about _you!_" And Hilda was overwhelmed by the sense of the enormity of the folly which she was committing.