"Shopping, my dear?" she asked. "Yes," said
Maggie, looking her full in the face. "What sort of shopping, dear?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Maggie. "There's always something every
day."
Maggie had an uncomfortable feeling that her aunt had in some way
mysteriously defeated her by this sudden abandonment of all protest,
and for a moment the mysterious house closed around her, with its
shadows and dim corners and the little tinkling Chapel hell in the
heart of it. But the thought of Martin dissolved the shadows, and
off she went.
They agreed to meet every morning at eleven o'clock outside
Hatchards, the bookseller's, in Piccadilly. They chose that place
because you could look into a bookseller's window for quite a long
time without seeming odd, and there were so many people passing that
no one noticed you. Their habit then was to walk to the corner of
the Green Park and there climb on to the top of a motor omnibus and
go as far as they could within the allotted time. Maggie never in
after life found those streets again. They had gone, she supposed,
to Chelsea, to St. John's Wood, to the heart of the city, to the
Angel, Islington, to Westminster and beyond, but places during those
three weeks had no names, streets had no stones, houses no walls,
and human figures no substantiality.
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