Mrs. Arbuthnot, groping for guidance, prayed about it to exhaustion.
The poor were the filter through which the money was passed, to come out, Mrs. Arbuthnot hoped, purified.
"Think how much nicer we shall be when we come back," she said to Mrs. Arbuthnot, encouraging that pale lady.
Mrs. Arbuthnot's conscience, made super-sensitive by years of pampering, could not reconcile what she was doing with its own high standard of what was right.
Some people were like that, Mrs. Arbuthnot knew; and if Mrs. Wilkins had actually seen her at the mediaeval castle it did seem probable that struggling would be a waste of time.
And what disturbed Mrs. Arbuthnot about this suggestion was that she did not make it solely to comfort Mrs. Wilkins; she made it because of her own strange longing for the mediaeval castle.
Both Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins were shattered; try as they would not to, both felt extraordinarily guilty; and when on the morning of the 30th they did finally get off there was no exhilaration about the departure, no holiday feeling at all.
Of Course Mrs. Arbuthnot was not miserable--how could she be, she asked herself, when God was taking care of her?--but she let that pass for the moment unrepudiated, because of her conviction that here was another fellow-creature in urgent need of her help; and not just boots and blankets and better sanitary arrangements this time, but the more delicate help of comprehension, of finding the exact right words.