Miss Mole

It had been conducted with a skill of which, unfortunately, only she was aware, and of which she could not boast, and her reward was a possession needing care and involving obligations. She was growing fond of Ruth and, ten years ago, she had promised herself future freedom from soft emotions. They were more trouble than they were worth, but vanity was her weakness. She strove for admiration and found she could get nothing without giving something else. She saw that she would have to resign herself to being fond of Ruth, she had gone too far to withdraw, but there she would have to stop: she must not saddle herself with the whole family and, indeed, it was not likely that she would have the chance. Robert Corder and she were naturally antipathetic, though he had been amiable this evening, praising the mushrooms, with perhaps a covert suggestion that the kitchen was her sphere and she would do well to stay in it, while Ethel was so much divided against herself, dragged in one direction by religion and in another by mundane desires, that no one else could put the parts together and handle them.

“I’ve nearly finished,” she heard Ruth saying, “I’m nearly ready for the burglar story.”

“It’s not a good one for this time of night.”

“Oh, Miss Mole, you said you liked him!”

“So I did, but then I’ve got queer tastes. And I’m afraid you’ve scamped your work.”

“But it’s such a chance⁠—when everybody’s out.”

“Oh well⁠—” Hannah said, hastily gathering her thoughts. “It was when I was living with an old lady who wore a wig. People without experience of wigs believe they simplify life. They think you just take them off and put them on. Nothing of the sort. A wig needs as much care as a pedigree Pekinese and I know, because I’ve looked after both. I lost a situation once because a woman heard me telling her nasty little dog what I really thought of it, but it did me good, and the dog too, I daresay. Well, anyhow, this old lady had a wig, in fact she had two, because they had to be sent to the hairdresser, now and then, to be tidied up, and they were bright gold. She was rich, and I suppose she liked the colour. But she wasn’t a bad old woman. I was fond of her. Well, one night⁠—it was a lonely house, simply asking for burglars to walk into it⁠—and I ought to have told you that one of the wigs had come back from the hairdresser that very evening, in a registered parcel, and I’d left it, unopened, on the landing table where the bedroom candles were put. It was that kind of house.”

“Ah,” said Ruth, “the burglar thought it was jewels!”

“Wait a minute. I saw my old lady into bed and into her nightcap and I longed to tell her how nice she looked when she wasn’t tricked out in the yellow hair⁠—”

“But it must have been awful when the wig was off and the cap wasn’t on! I don’t think I could have stayed there.”

“I didn’t stay long. The old lady died. She was going to leave me some money, she said, and I think she meant it, but she died first. It’s a way old ladies have.”

“Did she die of fright about the burglar?”

“She didn’t know there’d been one, because he took nothing. Nothing!” Hannah repeated impressively. “And all through me! If she’d known that, she might have given me the money there and then.”

“And you didn’t tell her?”

“I haven’t told a soul until tonight. And I’d better warn you that the story’s got a moral.”

“Of course it has. And the moral’s that you mustn’t be too modest.”

“That’s always been one of my failings,” Hannah said with a wink. “But this story’s hanging fire a bit, isn’t it? I’ll cut it short. I woke up in the night and heard a rustling sort of noise. ‘Mice!’ I said to myself, but it wasn’t exactly a mousy noise. So I listened and my heart began to thump and, very quietly, I got out of bed. I turned the door handle without making a sound, and then⁠—” she sat up to illustrate her action, “I threw the door open⁠—like that⁠—and what do you think I saw?”

Ruth shook her head. She knew she was not expected to reply.

“I saw the burglar, looking at himself in the mirror, with my old lady’s wig on the top of his head!”

“Then,” said Ruth slowly, “there must have been a light on the landing.”

“Yes, there was,” Hannah said quickly. “He’d turned it on. And that’s where you’re supposed to laugh and you haven’t even smiled.”

“I’m thinking about the light. He can’t have been a good burglar.”

“He wasn’t. He was a funny one. I laughed and he laughed and, after that, we felt we were friends, and he went away like a gentleman, saying he was glad he’d met me. And the moral is that we must be ready to laugh on the most terrifying occasions. Now, I call that rather a good story and a good moral, and you don’t seem to like it a bit.”

“I’m rather worried about it,” said Ruth, and she looked frowningly past Hannah’s head, “because, if it was a house that had bedroom candles, would the landing have had electric light? I really do like the story, Miss Mole, but I can’t bear not to get things clear. Now, if he’d had an electric torch⁠—”

“Yes,” said Hannah gloomily, “I ought to have thought of that, but it wouldn’t have done. You see, the drama of the thing is opening your bedroom door in the dark, simply shaking like a leaf, as they say, and finding a blaze of light and a burglar standing in front of a looking-glass with a wig on his head. The bedroom candles were a mistake.”

“Miss Mole,” Ruth said solemnly, “did you make it up?”

Three times Hannah slowly nodded her head catching