“Is that you, Ethel?” he asked, peering towards the figure by the fire which must have illumined it adequately.
Hannah smiled at the subtlety of this rebuke. “I’m afraid it’s me,” she said gently. “I came in to see that the fire hadn’t gone out, and fires have such a reminiscent effect.”
“A pleasant one, I hope,” he said, kindly making an excuse for the unwarrantable lingering.
“No,” Hannah said. “Not at all. Perfectly horrid, in fact. But there, what does it matter? I’ll light the gas. And when we’re not allowed to have coal fires any more, there’ll be a lot of changes. We shan’t be so much inclined to think about our sins, and babies bathed by electric radiators won’t be the same as babies bathed by open fires, lovers won’t be so romantic and, in the face of scientific improvements, we shan’t think about the past.” She struck a match and shielded it while she looked at him. “Do you think those will be changes for the better?”
It was obviously his duty to answer this question, which might just as well have been put without so much elaboration, but it was a duty Miss Mole should not have imposed on him and he answered coldly, and indirectly: “I think we must always be prepared to suffer for our mistakes.”
“Oh, I’m prepared.” She lit the gas and turned to him again, and her face had a disconcertingly elfin look. “Prepared,” she repeated, “but not what I should call really satisfactorily equipped,” and she turned to go, but Mr. Corder, as usual, called her back.
“There will be the chapel waits here, this evening, Miss Mole. You have not forgotten that, I hope.”
“Coffee and cakes,” Hannah said promptly. “I’m so glad you reminded me.” She would have been sorry to miss the opportunity of watching his Christmas geniality with the minstrels.
XXVI
On Christmas morning, by candlelight, Doris brought an early cup of tea to Miss Mole, with an ornamental box of biscuits, from her young man and herself, on the tray.
“My friend says it’s the least we could do,” she replied, when Hannah had made suitable exclamations. “He thinks you’re such a nice lady.”
“Does he?” Hannah sat up and the long plait of her dark hair fell across the front of her nightgown. “And I think he’s a nice young man and I’ll eat some of your biscuits now, and when they’re finished I shall keep the box on the dressing-table for all my little odds and ends. Thank you for the tea, too, Doris. It was a kind thought and you might make a precedent of it, if you know what that means.”
Doris did not know and was not concerned to learn. She was used to what she called Miss Mole’s queer way of talking and she was burdened, at the moment, with a confession she had to make.
“It was Mr. Wilfrid who told me to do it, before he went away,” she said. “And I told my friend and that’s how we come to think of the biscuits. I was to make you a nice cup of tea, Mr. Wilfrid said, and give you this parcel on the quiet. I reckon it’s something he didn’t want the rest of them to see. And he give me ten shillings for myself,” she added with a sigh. She was more than satisfied with her young man, whose mother was so respectably stiff, but Mr. Wilfrid was her ideal of manly beauty and winsomeness. To keep Miss Mole’s little parcel for him was an honour, but it was hard to go away and leave her to the discovery of what was inside and, among Doris’s other reckonings was the one that she would never know what she had been carrying in her pocket for the last three days.
It was a small parcel and a small parcel suggested something rare, and, turning it over and rattling it before she opened it, Hannah pretended she would find a ruby ring or a necklace of pearls, just as she had felt her stocking, thirty odd years ago, and imagined marvellous toys she knew would not be there, and when, at last, leaning towards the candle, she drew a brooch from the little box, tears started into her eyes and she could not see it clearly. She could feel that it was smooth and oval, with a narrow twisted rim, and she wiped her eyes on the sheet and had a good look before she began to cry again. Wilfrid, if he was awake at this moment, would think she must be laughing, and she did laugh while she cried, for that boy had tactfully chosen an old brooch which had a humorous reference to his avowed admiration and excused the nature of his gift. The brooch was held in a narrow twist of gold and under a shield of glass was what Hannah thought must be an engraving of the blind Cupid drawing his bow, the offering, no doubt, of some early Victorian lover to his lady.
Holding the brooch and crying with childish abandonment, for pleasure in this pretty tribute, she wondered how much time he had spent before he found exactly the right thing, beautiful in itself, a whimsical comment on his liking for her, and an ornament which might, so conveniently, have belonged to her own grandmother. She would wear it at the Spenser-Smiths’ party with Mr. Samson’s lace; she could not wear the Chinese silk
