Now that she actually saw the house standing above her, it seemed impossible that it could be hers, easy as it had been to believe when it was only a picture in her mind. Seized by a fear that it might suddenly vanish, she set off towards it with such ardour that she nearly finished the climb in a dead faint, reaching her goal just in time to cling thankfully to the iron railings. She stood there for a little while, with the house heaving and blurring before her eyes, and then stumbled uncertainly through the gate and knocked feebly at Mrs. Bell’s. The latter, who had noted her approach through the holes of a lace curtain upstairs, allowed a decent interval to elapse, and then appeared with an air of surprise. “Eh, now, Mrs. Clapham, that’s never you!” she began elaborately, lifting her hands, but stopped her acting at once when she saw the other’s exhaustion. “Come in ... come in ... you look real done up!...” She bustled her anxiously into the kitchen. “What in the name o’ fortune fetched you up so fast?” “I was that keen to get here!” the charwoman acknowledged, half-laughing and half-crying, and thoroughly thankful to get her cotton-wool legs to a place of rest. “You’ll have heard they’ve given me t’ house?” she gasped presently, taking out a large white pocket-handkerchief and wiping her face. “I’m right anxious to have a look at it, and they said as you’d have t’ key.” “Them as comes up the hill fastest like enough goes down it soonest!” Mrs. Bell observed grimly, ignoring the key, and speaking with the wisdom of one who had seen many cheerful acquirers of the house descend the hill again much less cheerfully—in coffins. She was the oldest tenant—by tenure—at the moment, and prided herself accordingly. “Not but what it’ll be a long time before your turn comes,” she added graciously, having made her point; “that is, as long as any of us can hope to look for. Folks on pensions and suchlike live for ever, they say—leastways, that’s what _they_ say as has the gift o’ the pensions—but I can’t say it’s been my experience. I’ve seen a ter’ble lot o’ coming and going in my time up here; in at one door and out at t’ other it’s been, so to speak. What, there’s been whiles when I haven’t even rightly known what folks was called, until I’d read their names on their tombstones after they was gone!”... She paused for appreciation, which the visitor supplied weakly.... “Ay, we heard as you’d got t’ house,” she continued, condescending to answer at last. “Mr. Allen the butcher got it from Mrs. Walls—her as is office-cleaner for that Baines.” “Mr. Baines sent a note by his little girl....” Mrs. Clapham contrived to sit up, and began a shaky but lengthy account of the great event. Mrs. Bell, at least, looked as though she would live for ever, she thought to herself, surveying the wiry old woman in her multitudinous clothes. “Meeting was yesterday, as you’ll likely know, and Mr. Baines sent word to-day.”