and chances of success there, which he could only do by an interview with the latter gentleman. Margaret knew that they ought to be removing; but she had a repugnance to the idea of a manufacturing town, and believed that her mother was receiving benefit from Heston air, so she would willingly have deferred the expedition to Milton.

For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay. It was all the darker from contrast with the pale gray-blue of the wintry sky; for in Heston there had been the earliest signs of frost. Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke; perhaps, after all, more a loss of the fragrance of grass and herbage than any positive taste or smell. Quick they were whirled over long, straight, hopeless streets of regularly-built houses, all small and of brick. Here and there a great oblong many-windowed factory stood up, like a hen among her chickens, puffing out black “unparliamentary” smoke, and sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had taken to foretell rain. As they drove through the larger and wider streets, from the station to the hotel, they had to stop constantly; great loaded lurries blocked up the not over-wide thoroughfares. Margaret had now and then been into the city in her drives with her aunt. But there the heavy lumbering vehicles seemed various in their purposes and intent; here every van, every wagon and truck, bore cotton, either in the raw shape in bags, or the woven shape in bales of calico. People thronged the footpaths, most of them well-dressed as regarded the material, but with a slovenly looseness which struck Margaret as different from the shabby, threadbare smartness of a similar class in London.

“New Street,” said Mr. Hale. “This, I believe, is the principal street in Milton. Bell has often spoken to me about it. It was the opening of this street from a lane into a great thoroughfare, thirty years ago, which has caused his property to rise so much in value. Mr. Thornton’s mill must be somewhere not very far off, for he is Mr. Bell’s tenant. But I fancy he dates from his warehouse.”

“Where is our hotel, papa?”

“Close to the end of this street, I believe. Shall we have lunch before or after we have looked at the houses we marked in the Milton Times?”

“Oh, let us get our work done first.”

“Very well. Then I will only see if there is any note or letter for me from Mr. Thornton, who said he would let me know anything he might hear about these houses, and then we will set off. We will keep the cab; it will be safer than losing ourselves, and being too late for the train this afternoon.”

There were no letters awaiting him. They set out on their house-hunting. Thirty pounds a-year was all they could afford to give, but in Hampshire they could have met with a roomy house and pleasant garden for the money. Here, even the necessary accommodation of two sitting-rooms and four bedrooms seemed unattainable. They went through their list, rejecting each as they visited it. They then looked at each other in dismay.

“We must go back to the second, I think. That one⁠—in Crampton, don’t they call the suburb? There were three sitting-rooms; don’t you remember how we laughed at the number compared with the three bedrooms? But I have planned it all. The front room downstairs is to be your study and our dining-room (poor papa!), for you know, we settled mamma is to have as cheerful a sitting-room as we can get; and that front room upstairs, with the atrocious blue and pink paper and heavy cornice, had really a pretty view over the plain, with a great bend of river, or canal, or whatever it is, down below. Then I could have the little bedroom behind, in that projection at the head of the first flight of stairs over the kitchen, you know⁠—and you and mamma the room behind the drawing-room, and that closet in the roof will make you a splendid dressing-room.”

“But Dixon, and the girl we are to have to help?”

“Oh, wait a minute. I am overpowered by the discovery of my own genius for management. Dixon is to have⁠—let me see, I had it once⁠—the back sitting-room. I think she will like that. She grumbles so much about the stairs at Heston; and the girl is to have that sloping attic over your room and mamma’s. Won’t that do?”

“I dare say it will. But the papers. What taste! And the overloading such a house with colour and such heavy cornices!”

“Never mind, papa! Surely you can charm the landlord into re-papering one or two of the rooms⁠—the drawing-room and your bedroom⁠—for mamma will come most in contact with them; and your bookshelves will hide a great deal of that gaudy pattern in the dining-room.”

“Then you think it the best? If so, I had better go at once and call on this Mr. Donkin, to whom the advertisement refers me. I will take you back to the hotel, where you can order lunch, and rest, and by the time it is ready, I shall be with you. I hope I shall be able to get new papers.”

Margaret hoped so too, though she said nothing. She had never come fairly in contact with the taste that loves ornament, however bad, more than the plainness and simplicity which are of themselves the framework of elegance.

Her father took her through the entrance of the hotel, and leaving her at the foot of the staircase, went to the address of the landlord of the house they had fixed upon. Just as Margaret had her hand on the door of their sitting-room, she was followed by a quick-stepping waiter:

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. The gentleman was gone so quickly, I had no time to tell him. Mr. Thornton

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