“And you’ve got my name wrong,” Hannah said. “My name is Mole.”
“That’s a silly kind of a name,” he said indignantly. “I’ll stick to the one I’ve given you—Miss Fitt! See the joke? That’s what you are and if you don’t know it you’ll soon find out.”
“Oh—I see!” Hannah said, and laughed so clearly that a young man, coming whistling down the street, stopped his own music to listen.
Wilfrid was by her side when she reached the door and he slipped his arm into hers. “What’s the meaning of this, Mona Lisa? I heard sounds of revelry and girlish laughter. Clandestine meetings with our godless neighbour?”
“Catching his cat,” Hannah said.
“Useful things, cats,” said Wilfrid. “And dogs. I suppose the uncle isn’t in yet, but you’ve been running it rather close, you know. And don’t try to look severe, because you can’t, with love’s young dream all over your face.” He shut the door and looked round the hall as though he scented trouble. “Ethel in?” he asked carelessly.
“Yes,” said Hannah, and she gave him a sharp look.
He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. “It’s not my fault, Mona Lisa,” he said languidly, but there was dancing laughter in his eyes. “How did I know she’d come home by Prince’s Road?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hannah said, and she went into the dining-room where Ruth was crouching by the fire, her face as sharp as a rat’s.
“You left me alone in the house,” she complained bitterly. “You needn’t have done that, need you? And Ethel might have come down and killed me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Come along to bed.”
“But you don’t know, you don’t know! This is the first bad one she’s had since you came. I can’t go into that room and listen to her banging. She’ll do it for hours and I can hear her.”
“What am I to do with you all?” Hannah asked sadly.
“And we’d had such a happy evening,” Ruth went on. “It’s no good being happy. It’s better to be miserable all the time.”
“And still better to be brave. Think of me and the burglar!”
Ruth was not to be comforted. “That’s only a story. This is a bad dream that keeps coming back.”
“My poor lamb,” Hannah said, “you shall sleep in my room if I have to sleep on the floor.”
“Can I?” It was pitiable to see how the sharp face softened.
“And you’d better be quick about it,” Wilfrid said through the open door. “I can hear the uncle marching up the path.”
Hannah paused to give him a nod of gratitude as she hurried Ruth up the stairs. There was nothing seriously wrong with that boy: he had the kindest heart in the house, but it was not the house he ought to have been in.
XVI
Leaving a defiant maidservant and a nervous child on the top landing, Hannah descended to the one below, where she found Wilfrid waiting for her in his bedroom doorway and listening, between apprehension and amusement, to the sounds in Ethel’s room. These were the banging of drawers and the rattling of their handles under the shock, and Ethel’s footsteps thudding stubbornly across the floor, and Wilfrid made a gesture in their direction, and whispered, “Come in for a minute.”
“I can’t. I must get your uncle’s tea.”
“Let him wait! He’s been to the Spenser-Smiths’ and had a jolly good supper. He came back in their car. I heard it at the gate. He’ll be purring like a well-fed cat. As for you, Mona Lisa, you look like a stray one.”
“I do feel rather lost. I think I’ll ask Mr. Samson if he’s got room for me among the others.”
“And it’s all my fault,” Wilfrid sighed, dramatically running his fingers through his hair. “But why the deuce shouldn’t I walk home with a girl? It’s no more than common courtesy. And if I held her hand a bit longer than was necessary, what’s that to Ethel?”
“Nothing at all I should think. Don’t distress yourself,” Hannah said coldly. “There’s been trouble with Doris.”
“All right, Mona Lisa, all right! I can see you’re thinking I’m a conceited puppy. Have it your own way. But that doesn’t account for her running like a hare when she saw me. And what’s Doris been doing?”
“Walking out with a young man, I believe.”
“And I caught you flirting with old Samson! My word, we have been going it! Wouldn’t the uncle be pleased! He’s a bit morbid about intercourse between the sexes. Of course he approves of marriage, but the preliminaries make him sick. I call it an objectionable characteristic. How did he get married himself? But then, anything the uncle does is on a higher plane! I suppose,” he said slyly, “you haven’t noticed that?”
Hannah’s face lost all expression. That was her answer to Wilfrid and her own resistance to temptation. “And what about your own preliminaries, as you call them?” she asked. “Are you engaged to the young woman?”
“Engaged! Don’t be simple!”
“Well, in my young days, if we held hands we meant something by it.”
“Oh, we meant something, I assure you. And how dull your young days must have been, poor Mona Lisa.”
“No,” said Hannah, “they weren’t, because I wasn’t. It isn’t the days that are dull, it’s the people who can’t see them properly. What on earth do you think I should do in this house if I couldn’t make amusement for myself?”
“Oh, come, I do my best, but you’ve got a professional conscience. I admire you for it, but it doesn’t deceive me. Not in the least. Let’s exchange views about the uncle, Mona Lisa. It would do us both all the good in the world.”
“I can’t stay long enough,” Hannah said. “But I’ll tell you one thing you’ll like.” She smiled at him very sweetly. “There’s a remarkably strong family likeness between you and him. Not in the face. In the character,” and with that, and a spiteful little grimace
