“She wants feeding up,” she thought, as she smiled with determined brightness, and she promised herself that the day would come when this child would be glad of an excuse to knock at Miss Mole’s door. Even now her eyes had lighted on the bottled ship with a quickly hidden interest, and of that, too, Hannah made a mental note.
Her bedroom had been a pleasant surprise; the rest of the house was what she had known it must be. The hall smelt faintly of the morning’s cooking, the gas was protected by a lantern of red and blue glass, and though, when she entered the dining-room, she missed the green serge cover on a table which was laid for supper, the rusty fern was there, under a three-armed chandelier. One of these arms was fitted for incandescent gas which bubbled inside a frosted globe; the others were neglected and stood out gauntly like withered branches on a tree, but the room was further illuminated—though it still seemed rather dark—by an ordinary gas jet on each side of the fireplace, and these flames gently hissed in their globes of pink and white.
She noticed these things with a glance of her practised eye, and she had no time to verify her suspicion that there was cold mutton on the table before her hand was seized by a young woman who pranced to meet her.
In her nervous or happy moments, prancing was Ethel Corder’s gait and, indeed, she reminded Hannah of an awkward-tempered colt. There was a display of teeth and eyeballs, a look of half-playful viciousness for which her physical peculiarities were chiefly responsible. Her pale, scanty hair started growing too far back and there was a deficiency of eyebrow, yet her plainness had a certain feverish quality which attracted and held the attention.
“Someone’s been knocking her about in the stable or stealing her oats,” Hannah thought, while Ethel volubly explained that an emergency committee meeting had engaged her father and herself. “I shall have to be careful. And the little one looks like a starved donkey. It’s lucky I was brought up on a farm.” She wanted to stroke and reassure them both, to tell them she could make them plump and happy if they would trust her. She wanted to stop the gas from bubbling like a turkey and hissing like a pair of geese. She saw there was plenty here for a farmer’s daughter to do, and though this might not be the place Hannah Mole would have chosen for herself, it was the one that needed Hannah, and she was turning the cold mutton into a savoury hash for tomorrow’s dinner and getting rid of the rusty fern, when the voice which had cheered many a sewing-meeting bade her good evening.
“So this is Miss Mole,” he said, nicely fitting his tone to the one suitable for an emissary of Mrs. Spenser-Smith who was far from being Mrs. Spenser-Smith herself, and Hannah, prejudiced already, thought she saw him quickly appraising her as a useful nobody.
With the best will in the world it was impossible to think the same of him. His height, his handsome head of dark chestnut hair just flecked with grey, the pointed beard of a lighter colour, his suggestion of great physical energy, dominated the room, and with a stiffened back, but a crestfallen spirit, Hannah had to admit that Mr. Corder, too, was something of a surprise.
Meekly, she took her seat opposite to Ruth, the servant brought in a dish of damp potatoes, and Mr. Corder took up the carving knife and fork. Ethel had fallen silent and Ruth seemed determined not to speak. She looked crossly at the mutton on her plate and at Miss Mole on the other side of the table, but she bent industriously over her food when her father began to talk.
“This is a fine old city, Miss Mole,” he said, “full of historic associations, and we have one of the finest parish churches in the country—if you are interested in architecture,” he added, with a subtle suggestion that this was not likely.
Hannah longed to ask what effect her indifference would have on the building, but Mr. Corder did not wait for reassurance about its safety.
“Ruth must take you to see it, some day. On a Saturday afternoon, perhaps Ruthie?”
“I play hockey on Saturday afternoons,” Ruth muttered.
“Ah, yes, of course, these games!” Mr. Corder said good-humouredly. “Well, Miss Mole may find her way there herself. The Cathedral is not so good. I don’t care about the Cathedral, but we are rather proud of our Chapter House. It may surprise you—.” He interrupted himself. “By the way, what has happened to Wilfrid? Wilfrid is my nephew and he is supposed to be studying medicine at the University,” he told Hannah. “Do you know where he is, Ethel?”
Ethel’s eyes goggled nervously. “He had an engagement,” she said in haste, and Hannah suspected that Ruth’s smile had been calculated to make her sister exclaim angrily, “It’s perfectly true, Ruth! He told me about it yesterday.”
“And I knew he’d have it a week ago,” Ruth retorted coolly, and Hannah realised that this rude little girl was hinting that her cousin had taken care to avoid Miss Mole’s first evening.
Robert Corder lifted his eyebrows and managed to look bland as he said, “I think Ruth shares my opinion about the genuineness of Wilfrid’s engagements. However, we need not waste our time over Wilfrid. I was saying, Miss Mole, that you may be surprised at my interest in ecclesiastical architecture, but whatever our religious differences may be, these buildings are a common heritage, and when I first came to Radstowe, fifteen years ago, I made a point of seeing everything of interest or importance, and very valuable the knowledge has been to me. I have been able to wake a civic pride
