Miss Mole

had strolled past the house adventurously: at any moment Mr. Corder might appear and it would be hard to look like a woman with a right to be in the road. She was not curious about him: it was the house she was concerned with, and if she could put her head inside its door she would know, at once, whether she could be happy in it. That, however, was further than she dared to go and she had to content herself with an external view, finding nothing hopeful in the lace curtains and the plot of grass edged with laurels and confined by iron railings. The architect of that house had been no artist. It was an ugly house, yet its twin, next door, looked infinitely more habitable, though the Venetian blinds were askew. Dusty-looking red curtains, clasped by brass chains, draped the lower bow window and a birdcage containing a canary reminded Hannah painfully of Mrs. Widdows. No. 16 was quite as unattractive as No. 14 to the eye, but Hannah would have felt happier if the red curtains had belonged to Mr. Corder.

She was startled, the next morning, when she passed again, to hear a harsh voice bidding her good day and, standing on tiptoe to peer over the privet hedge which grew above No. 16’s railings, she saw a parrot in a cage in the middle of the grass plot. The bird leered at her for an instant and then with an insulting expression, pretended it had never seen her, though she offered it the usual complimentary remarks.

“Fond of birds?” asked another voice, and a face popped over the privet hedge, close to her own. “Picking up the dead leaves,” said its owner, showing her a handful, “and giving Poll an airing at the same time. Can’t let him out alone, ’cos of the cats. Even my own cats. Jealousy, I suppose. Now you’ll tell me that a bird is always a bird to a cat⁠—and they’d eat Minnie, that’s the canary, there, if they could get her, I haven’t a doubt, but⁠—and I’ve made a study of this⁠—it’s not food they’re after with Poll. It’s the human voice that upsets them and he’s remarkably chatty at times. The human voice, coming from the wrong place. It’s natural, when you come to think of it.”

Miss Mole had discovered why No. 16 was a fitter habitation for her than No. 14. She recognised something native to herself in this elderly man who could fall into conversation with a stranger, something congenial in his battered old face and his roguish, disrespectful eye. As much as she could see of him was arrayed in a sleeved woollen waistcoat, a high, stiff collar, and a red tie pierced by a pin with a diamond and opal horseshoe head, and he had the look of a man who would wear his cap in the house.

“That’s very interesting,” she said, dropping back on to her heels, while he pressed closer to the hedge to get a better sight of her, and his humorous, rather watery eyes seemed to be comparing her unfavourably with all the fine-looking women they had rested on.

“Saw you yesterday, didn’t I?” he asked. “Shaving at the time, up there,” he jerked a thumb backwards, “and saw a woman at the chapel door. ‘That’s a new thing,’ I said to myself. Couldn’t make it out at all, so I kept my eye on you. Seemed funny to me.”

“It would have been funnier if I’d got in,” Hannah said with a sniff.

“Ah, not my idea of fun, but if you want to get in,” he jerked his thumb sideways and his tone made large allowances for human vagaries, “you’ll get the key, I dessay, next door. Parson lives there. Went out half an hour ago with his coat tails flying. Pretended he didn’t see me,” he gave Hannah a slow wink, “but I could tell him a thing or two if I liked. Only, as it happens,” he sank out of sight and his voice came muffled through the hedge, “I don’t like.” She could hear him gathering up more leaves.

A farewell seemed unnecessary, to go without one seemed rude, and she murmured something to which he made no response, but he had brightened her outlook; to live next door to a man who could tell Robert Corder a thing or two, to discover what those things were, would be an alleviation of the dreariness she anticipated, and when she opened Lilla’s letter with the news that Mrs. Spenser-Smith had had her way and that Miss Mole would be expected in Beresford Road on the Tuesday of next week, Hannah could think more lightly of her bondage and face the fact that there were not many pounds left in her purse, but she made a wry face at Lilla’s much-underlined conclusion in which she pointed out that with fifty pounds a year, her board and lodging and the rent from her house in the country, Hannah would surely be able to lay something by for a rainy day.

“About enough to buy a cheap umbrella,” Hannah said, flipping the letter across the table before she tore it into little pieces in carefulness that the secret of her relationship to Lilla should be kept.

For Mrs. Gibson, the next few days had a noble sadness in them. She was to lose Miss Mole but could not grudge her to the exalted state of being housekeeper to Mr. Corder, and Miss Mole knew she would be welcome at any time if she liked to drop in for a cup of tea. Mrs. Gibson gazed admiringly at this woman who had appeared out of nowhere to save Mr. Ridding’s life, to keep out the policeman and avert an inquest and who betrayed no nervousness at the prospect of living with a minister, a man whose jokes, as Mrs. Gibson recognised, were comparable to passing froth on a pool of unknown depth.

Hannah’s own sadness was shot with a sense of adventure.