CHAPTER III. A VISIT TO KENTISH TOWN. It was just before twelve o’clock next morning when Miss Merivale reached Cadogan Mansions. She told the cabman to wait, and walked slowly up the long flights of stone steps. About half-way up, she met a girl coming down, with light springing steps, buttoning a pair of shabby dogskin gloves. Her dress was shabby too, and the little black straw hat had seen long service; but Miss Merivale only noticed her bonnie face. It brightened the dreary staircase like a gleam of sunshine. It never struck her that this was the girl she had come to see. From Pauline’s words the day before, she had pictured Rhoda Sampson as a very different sort of girl. The flat was at the top of the high buildings, and Miss Merivale was out of breath by the time she reached the neat front door with the electric bell. She had not long to wait before her ring was answered by Mrs. Richards, a thin, careworn woman, who ushered her into the sitting-room where Miss Desborough sat at her writing-table. She jumped up, with her pen in her hand. “Miss Merivale, what a delightful surprise! Is Rose with you? I was so sorry to miss you yesterday, but I had to go to a committee meeting. I have more work on my hands just now than I can do. Would you mind my just finishing this letter for the post? It is very important. I shall not be five minutes.” Miss Merivale, who had seen Clare running about the garden at Woodcote three summers before with her hair flying, was considerably taken aback by her extremely “grown-up” manner. She sat meekly down on the sofa and waited for the letter to be finished. “There, it’s done!” Clare exclaimed, after a moment or two. “Now I will just give it to Mrs. Richards, and we can have a little talk. Pauline will be back in half an hour,” She glanced as she spoke at a tiny clock on the writing-table. “Then after lunch I must rush off to Southwark. I shall find a big mothers’ meeting waiting for me. The women bring their needlework, and I talk to them. Last week we considered Food Stuffs in reference to young children, and this afternoon I am going to discuss Herbert Spencer’s Theory of Education.” “Dear me! these sound very difficult subjects for you, my dear,” said Miss Merivale, trying to repress a laugh as she looked at Clare’s serious young face. “They must need a great deal of preparation.” “Yes, that is the worst of it. I haven’t time for any study. We workers lead very busy lives, Miss Merivale. I am rushing all day from one thing to another, feeling all the time that I ought to be doing something else.” It suggested itself to Miss Merivale that work undertaken in that hurried fashion must do more harm than good; but she was too eager to speak of Rhoda Sampson to think much of anything else. “You have someone to help you, Miss Smythe told us yesterday,” she said. “Someone who typewrites your letters.”