Arnold Bennett
HILDA LESSWAYS
Published by
Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting
[email protected] 2017 OK Publishing ISBN 978-80-272-3332-8
Table of Contents
1 An Event in Mr. Skellorn’s Life
6 Victor Hugo and Isaac Pitman
11 Disillusion
12 The Telegram
14 To London
1 Sin
4 The Sea
Book i
Her Start in Life
Chapter 1
An Event in Mr. Skellorn’s Life
i
The Lessways household, consisting of Hilda and her widowed mother, was temporarily without a servant. Hilda hated domestic work, and because she hated it she often did it passionately and thoroughly. That afternoon, as she emerged from the kitchen, her dark, defiant face was full of grim satisfaction in the fact that she had left a kitchen polished and irreproachable, a kitchen without the slightest indication that it ever had been or ever would be used for preparing human nature’s daily food; a show kitchen. Even the apron which she had worn was hung in concealment behind the scullery door. The lobby clock, which stood over six feet high and had to be wound up every night by hauling on a rope, was noisily getting ready to strike two. But for Mrs. Lessways’ disorderly and