Hilda nodded. Never again would she ignore an urgent telegram, though she did not believe that this telegram had any real importance. She attributed it to Sarah's increasing incompetence and hysterical foolishness. "I wonder whether I can get on to Brighton to-night if I take the six train?" Hilda asked, and to herself: "Can it have anything to do with George?" Alicia, endowed with authority, went in search of a Bradshaw. But the quest was fruitless. In the Five Towns the local time-table, showing the connections with London, suffices for the citizen, and the breast-pocket of no citizen is complete without it. "Clayhangers are bound to have a Bradshaw," cried Alicia, breathless with running about the house. "Of course they are," Janet agreed. "I'll walk down there now," said Hilda, with extraordinary promptitude. "It won't take five minutes." "I'd go," said Alicia, "only I should be late for school." "Shall I send some one down?" Janet suggested. "You might be taken dizzy again." "No, thanks," Hilda replied deliberately. "I'll go--myself. There's nothing wrong with me at all." "You'll have to be sharp over it," said Alicia pertly. "Don't forget it's Thursday. They shut up at two, and it's not far off two now." "I'm going this very minute," said Hilda. "And I'm going this very second!" Alicia retorted. They all three left Janet's bedroom; the new cloak cast over a chair- back, was degraded into a tedious banality--and ignored. In less than a minute Hilda, hatted and jacketed and partially gloved, was crossing the garden. She felt most miraculously happy and hopeful, and she was full of irrational gratitude to Alicia, as though Alicia were a benefactor! The change in her mood seemed magic in its swiftness. If Janet, with calm, cryptic face, had not been watching her from the doorway, she might have danced on the gravel. CHAPTER V THURSDAY AFTERNOON I She was walking with Edwin Clayhanger up Duck Bank on the way to Bursley railway station. A simple errand and promenade,--and yet she felt herself to be steeped in the romance of an adventure! The adventure had surprisingly followed upon the discovery that Alicia had been quite wrong. "Clayhangers are bound to have a Bradshaw," the confident Alicia had said. But Clayhangers happened not to have a Bradshaw. Edwin was alone in the stationery shop, save for the assistant. He said that his father was indisposed. And whereas the news that Clayhangers had no Bradshaw left Hilda perfectly indifferent, the news that old Darius Clayhanger was indisposed and absent produced in her a definite feeling of gladness. Edwin had decided that the most likely place to search for a Bradshaw was the station, and he had offered to escort her to the station. Nothing could have been more natural, and at the same time more miraculous.