Miss Mole

touched by that spectacle of a slip of a girl pretending she had no troubles. Hannah, too, felt every admiration for Mrs. Ridding, but Mrs. Ridding had a baby, and a neurotic husband was a price worth paying for it. For the sake of one good baby, Hannah would have paid more than that and there were times when she felt vexed with Mr. Blenkinsop. Because Mrs. Ridding was the first woman of his acquaintance who had faced a difficult situation bravely, he would naturally think she was the only one there was and, flattered by the belief that he had made this discovery for himself, he was ready to credit her with every other good quality, as a man, finding a new continent, would refuse to see a fault in it. She could now understand his resentment at the unnecessary preservation of Mr. Ridding, yet⁠—here was the vicious circle again⁠—if Mr. Ridding had been left to die, Mrs. Ridding would, in all likelihood, have disappeared from Prince’s Road or, if she had remained, Mr. Blenkinsop would have considered her fortunate and taken no further interest in her, and it seemed to Hannah that her own mistake in life, always had been, and still was, her refusal to feel any sorrow for herself or to suggest herself as a subject for sorrow in other people. In her attempts to attract Mr. Blenkinsop’s attention, with sprightliness, intellect and ignorance, she had omitted the one method which would have been successful. Then she caught sight of her image in the glass and remembered that pathos without beauty is merely irritating, that a woman with a long nose could not be touching in her sadness, and at this point she neglected her stories for philosophical speculations on the effect of noses on destiny. In women, the perfect nose, in its appearance and its effects, was rather delicately cut, and very delicately tilted, while the suspicion of a droop had a tendency to produce tragedy unless its owner was a determined person, like herself. She had no theories about men’s noses. In the comparative unimportance of a man’s features, she reluctantly found proof of some sort of superiority in the other sex, and when she tried to remember the details of Mr. Blenkinsop’s face, she could recall no more than a clear skin, an impression of solid worth and a pair of spectacles.

She was as glad, then, as she was astonished, when, on another Wednesday night, he gave her an opportunity to look at him. She was alone in the house, for Ruth was at some school festivity and Hannah was working at a party frock which was to be a surprise for her. One of Ruth’s objections to the Spenser-Smiths’ parties was the inadequacy of her clothes and the grandeur of Margery Spenser-Smith’s, and Hannah, who had known worse than inadequacy in her own, was determined that her child should be as prettily dressed as Lilla’s.

She frowned at the interruption when the bell rang, but she smiled when she saw Mr. Blenkinsop. “You have a very bad memory,” she told him. “It’s Wednesday night and Mr. Corder isn’t in.”

“Is anyone else at home?” he enquired.

“Only me,” Hannah said. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“I’d rather come in, unless I shall be in the way.”

“Not at all, and if you’re handy with your needle, I can give you plenty to do. But I expect,” she said, looking at him gravely, “you can’t manage anything more complicated than buttons.”

“I haven’t even got a needle. Mrs. Gibson makes that unnecessary.”

“Mrs. Gibson spoils people. You’ll miss her when you leave her.”

In the act of following Hannah into the dining-room, Mr. Blenkinsop stood still. “Who said I was going to leave her?”

“There was a murmur about it, wasn’t there? A kind of subterranean growl? Come and sit down. And I thought you might have come to the conclusion that it was the best thing to do. If I had a little capital, I’d start a boarding house, for what they call single gentlemen, myself, and I’d look after you like a mother, Mr. Blenkinsop.”

“But I haven’t the slightest intention of leaving Mrs. Gibson.”

“Oh, well, Mr. Blenkinsop, you’re the best judge, of course,” she said primly, picking up her sewing.

“Certainly I am,” he said stoutly. “And as for starting a boarding house, that would be a very silly thing to do.”

“Why? If I can manage this family,” Hannah said impressively, “I should make child’s play of the single gents.”

“You’re too young,” Mr. Blenkinsop said, frowning a little.

“Young!” Hannah’s laughter, the sound which had silenced Wilfrid’s whistling as he came down the street, was like a mockery of her own derision. “Why, how old do you think I am?”

“About my own age, I suppose.”

Hannah shook her head. “Centuries older, Mr. Blenkinsop. Perhaps only a few years, as we count time, but while you’ve been behind your bars in the bank I’ve been pushing my way into other people’s houses and being pushed out again. Great fun!” she added hastily. “I’d rather be allowed to run wild and pick up my living than be kept in your gilded cage. And the only thing I don’t like about Mr. Samson⁠—.”

“Who’s Mr. Samson?”

“Nobody seems to know Mr. Samson and he’s an extraordinary character. I really think I like him as well as Robert Corder,” Hannah said thoughtfully. “But he keeps birds in cages, and you know about the robin redbreast in a cage, don’t you, Mr. Blenkinsop? He puts all Heaven in a rage and that’s how I feel when I think of you in the bank. From the first moment I saw you, looking through the kitchen window⁠—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to refer to that again⁠—you reminded me of a bird. My favourite bird,” she said, but she would not tell him what that was and, as she looked at him, she decided that he was not so owlish as she had thought. The spectacles gave him most of his