'I talked to my husband about it,' she said; 'he's proposed to make you an allowance so that you can retire from business.'
'Oh, that's Sir Herbert all over,' said Mrs Griffith, greasily--she knew nothing about him but his name!
'How much do you think you could live on?' asked Daisy.
Mrs Griffith looked at George and then at Edith. What should they ask? Edith and George exchanged a glance; they were in agonies lest Mrs Griffith should demand too little.
'Well,' said that lady, at last, with a little cough of uncertainty, 'in our best years we used to make four pounds a week out of the business--didn't we, George?'
'Quite that!' answered he and his wife, in a breath.
'Then, shall I tell my husband that if he allows you five pounds a week you will be able to live comfortably?'
'Oh, that's very handsome!' said Mrs Griffith.
'Well, that is hard. After not seeing you all these years. But you know best, of course!'
'There's no train up to London for two hours yet,' said George.
'No; I want to take a walk through Blackstable.'
'Oh, you'd better drive, in your position.'
Then Mrs Griffith again enveloped her daughter in her arms, and told her she had always loved her and that she was her only daughter; after which, Daisy allowed herself to be embraced by her brother and his wife. Finally they shut the door on her and watched her from the window walk slowly down the High Street.
'If you'd asked it, I believe she'd have gone up to six quid a week,' said George.
Daisy walked down the High Street slowly, looking at the houses she remembered, and her lips quivered a little; at every step smells blew across to her full of memories--the smell of a tannery, the blood smell of a butcher's shop, the sea-odour from a shop of fishermen's clothes.... At last she came on to the beach, and in the darkening November day she looked at the booths she knew so well, the boats drawn up for the winter, whose names she knew, whose owners she had known from her childhood; she noticed the new villas built in her absence. And she looked at the grey sea; a sob burst from her; but she was very strong, and at once she recovered herself. She turned back and slowly walked up the High Street again to the station. The lamps were lighted now, and the street looked as it had looked in her memory through the years; between the 'Green Dragon' and the 'Duke of Kent' were the same groups of men--farmers, townsfolk, fishermen--talking in the glare of the rival inns, and they stared at her curiously as she passed, a tall figure, closely veiled. She looked at the well-remembered shops, the stationery shop with its old-fashioned, fly-blown knick-knacks, the milliner's with cheap, gaudy hats, the little tailor's with his antiquated fashion plates. At last she came to the station, and sat in the waiting-room, her heart full of infinite sadness--the terrible sadness of the past....