Miss Mole

understand. And, if she had stayed, what a pleasantly-shocking little talk he and Robert Corder, closeted in the study, would have had about her! She could imagine the shakings of heads over Mr. Pilgrim’s revelations, the pursings of lips, and Robert Corder’s sudden, angry realisation that he would have to face an awkward situation. She had spared him that, for the present, and it had been easier than she dared to hope when the name of Mr. Pilgrim fell blastingly on her ears. It was Mr. Pilgrim for whom she had been so ready to kill the fatted calf⁠—but it was she who was the prodigal! It was he who was the eligible bachelor of her hopes and, characteristically, she had time to be sorry for Ethel before she began to consider herself. Even Ethel could hardly be enthusiastic about Mr. Pilgrim after she had seen him, and Ruth and Wilfrid were already in dismay at the prospect of an evening with a strange minister. They enraged Ethel with their prophecies of how he would look and what he would say and, in spite of Hannah’s distress, she longed to prompt them. They wondered if he would be content to discuss ministerial affairs with Robert Corder, a possibility at which Ethel rolled anxious eyes, or whether they would be expected to help in his entertainment, and it was then that Wilfrid opened the door for Hannah by thanking his God they had her to rely on.

“And if he’s not the man I take him for, he’ll think she’s a rare bird to find in Beresford Road. But if he is, and I’m afraid he is, then it will be she who’ll get all the fun. So you’ll enjoy yourself, Mona Lisa, if no one else does, and you must do your best for us.”

Ethel was affronted as, no doubt, Wilfrid meant her to be, and her anger against him, assuaged by the imminence of Mr. Pilgrim, returned in force. She had been keeping her father’s house, she reminded him, for the last two years and this was not the first time they had received a guest. He was trying to make Miss Mole think she did not know how to behave⁠—he was always praising someone to annoy somebody else⁠—and, as a matter of fact, it would be easier for her without Miss Mole. It was very difficult to be the hostess when there was another woman there, older than oneself. It made her nervous. They had had the Spenser-Smiths to supper and Mrs. Spenser-Smith had said how nice everything had been.

“That was because she talked all the time. This Pilgrim fellow may stammer, or something, and then the uncle will have to do the talking and that’ll be the last visit Pilgrim pays here. You mark my words! It’s better to have Miss Mole in the hand than to drive Pilgrim into the bush.”

“Oh, how horrid you are!” Ethel cried. “Of course he doesn’t stammer. How could he preach?”

“Perhaps he can’t.”

“And you’re disgusting about Father, and perfectly ridiculous about Miss Mole.” Ethel’s voice was getting beyond control. “Why should you think she’s such a brilliant conversationalist? I’ve never noticed it.”

“Ah, she’s like old Samson’s parrot. She can do it when she chooses. But then, I know I’m prejudiced about her.”

Hannah raised her head from her darning and looked coolly from one to the other. “I don’t know what your manners will be like on Thursday,” she said quietly, “but I hope they won’t be what they are now. You needn’t continue the discussion because I happen to be engaged that evening.”

“Oh, I say, what luck! Can’t you be engaged to me?”

“But, Miss Mole⁠—” Ethel began and her face was stilled by her rapid calculations.

“If you’re thinking about the cooking, you needn’t worry about that. I shall leave the supper prepared and, as you say, it will be easier for you without me, and for everybody else.”

“It won’t. It’ll be much worse,” Ruth muttered, and Ethel, preoccupied with a new thought, could only dart a glance at this second ally of Miss Mole’s before she asked⁠—“But what will Father think?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah replied simply.

“And I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Mole⁠—”

“But you succeeded,” Hannah said.

“I’m sorry, Miss Mole. It was only because Wilfrid made me so angry. And I don’t think Father will like it. And suppose Doris makes mistakes?”

“She will,” Hannah said pleasantly, and she could have added the assurance that Mr. Pilgrim would not know.

It was clear that her mind was made up and though Robert Corder resented Miss Mole’s engagement, in a place unnamed, and let her know it, he also let her know, but without intention, that he was secretly relieved, for a housekeeper, like a son at Oxford, was a good thing to mention casually, but an irritation in the flesh, when she happened to have a trick of misinterpreting the most obvious remarks. It was this which had obliged him to ignore his discovery of her in Ruth’s bedroom and he felt mentally securer when she was out of the house.

She could divine all this with the acuteness which was partly natural and partly an acquired habit of self-defence, she could see him on the brink of asking what her engagement might be and retiring, as usual, under cover of some unnecessary orders, and now, just before the guest was due, she had run up the street to find a temporary refuge with Mrs. Gibson.

As she turned into Prince’s Road she reflected sagely on the sequence of events and the difficulty of deciding that this one was good and that one evil. If she had not deceived Mrs. Widdows and gone out to buy the reel of silk, she could not have saved Mr. Ridding’s life, and while Mr. Blenkinsop seemed to regret this preservation, it had been the means of providing Hannah with a shelter in her time of need. It was impossible to please everybody, and even the menace of