Miss Mole

was to write her little letter of thanks to Mrs. Spenser-Smith, as Robert Corder had directed, in the first person, and to do it with a gratitude which would make Lilla flush in annoyance and conceal the letter from Ernest, and she meant to add a threat that if Lilla chose to make trouble about Howard, her loving cousin would know how to make it for her, but this proved more difficult than she had thought and she tore up her attempt. Lilla might appear in Beresford Road, confident of her ability to right anything and demanding to know what it was. It would be better to go and see her, to suggest a probable cause of offence, to drop several hints from which Lilla could pick up the one she thought least objectionable, to leave her in no doubt that Hannah had a counterstroke for any indignant thrust at the family whose welfare she had so much at heart, and to set Lilla wondering at this loyalty. Lilla would curb any amount of indignation rather than have her relationship to poor Miss Mole made known. She would have been wiser to have announced it, regretfully, as a distant connection, from the first; now she must face the accusation of snobbishness and suffer from the truth of it, the accusation of deceit and explain it away without convincing anyone.

Hannah had no time to spare, but she made enough of it for the expedition across the downs and an interview with Lilla which sent her chuckling home again, burdened though she was with Christmas presents for the Corders.

“As you are here, you may as well take them and save the postage,” Lilla said.

“And how am I to explain where I got them?”

“That’s your affair, Hannah. I’ve never known you at a loss for a lie,” Lilla said severely.

Hannah pecked her cheek and wished her a happy Christmas. “And you’ll see us all at your party. I didn’t mean to come and embarrass you, dear, but Mr. Corder insisted that I should. He implied that he wouldn’t enjoy it without me.”

“You won’t get me to believe that,” Lilla said, but she was puzzled. A woman who attended to a man’s comfort could be a potent influence and men were very simple. Perhaps she had reckoned too surely on the safety of Hannah’s plain exterior. She was capable and Lilla could not deny her a peculiar kind of charm. Her arrival involved worry, but her departure took something exhilarating from the house and if she, who had disturbing doubts about the niceness of Hannah’s conscience, could feel like this, how much more likely was Robert Corder to become dependent on her gay resourcefulness. And Lilla remembered that there were years of Hannah’s life of which she did not know the history, and it suddenly occurred to her that Hannah’s anxiety for the happiness of the Corders could more naturally be interpreted as anxiety for herself, and this thought made Hannah’s playful threats more dangerous, for, bad as it was to have a cousin who was a housekeeper, it was worse to have one with a past.

Willingly carrying the parcels, to save Lilla a few pence, Hannah hurried back. There was bound to be a storm when Howard broke his news, but she believed she had reduced its violence and curtailed it. She had done a lot for Ruth, according to Uncle Jim, she had done something for Howard, and, if she could secure a reasonable existence for Ethel, her life, she told herself dramatically, would not have been lived in vain, but the last was the hardest of her undertakings and when she cast about for that middle-aged minister who might solve Ethel’s problem, she could see no one but Mr. Pilgrim, bearing olive and myrtle for Ethel and a sword for Hannah Mole.

She threw a longing glance at Mr. Samson’s windows as she passed. There was the old gentleman who might have been her salvation, but he had already told her that he lived on an annuity and had no dependents to consider except the cats and birds, and for their future he had made arrangements. “Then what is the good of my coming to see you?” Hannah had asked, and sent him off into one of his throaty chuckles.

Undeterred by the thought of the annuity, she went to see him that evening when the family was gathered in the drawing-room. She had made him a new night cover for the canary’s cage as a Christmas offering, and she hoped to give it to him and return before her absence was discovered, but Mr. Samson detained her. He had found among the jumble of objects he had collected in his travels, a fine piece of lace for Miss Fitt, and when she had thanked him and heard how he acquired it and how much less than its value he had paid for it, when he had draped it round her shoulders and said that that, at least, was not a misfit, it was nearly ten o’clock and time for Mr. Corder’s tea, and Mr. Corder was hovering in the hall when she opened the front door.

He looked at her bare head, at the parcel in her hand, and for the first time, he was openly angry with her, too angry to notice the tautening of her body and the lift of her head. He considered it most improper for Miss Mole to leave the house without warning; nobody had known where she was; they were all extremely worried, and had searched everywhere for her.

“Not everywhere,” Hannah said, smiling a little. The trump card was up her sleeve and she was going to bring it out. “If you had called next door you would have found me with Mr. Samson.”

“Mr. Samson! I very much object, Miss Mole, to any member of my household visiting that disreputable old man.”

“Is he disreputable? I think he’s lonely, and he misses Mrs. Corder. She used to go