“Difficult things to rear,” Hannah said.
“Pigs, perhaps?”
“Prices are so variable. You get a lot of pigs and find everyone else has got them, too. We used our pigs for our own bacon and that was about all.”
“Then what would you start with?”
“Years of experience,” Hannah said.
“Oh, don’t try to stop him, Moley—Miss Mole—” Ruth begged. “It would be lovely if he had a farm near Radstowe and we could go and stay with him. He could try with a tiny little place at first and then he wouldn’t lose much money. What a pity he can’t have your little farm. Couldn’t you let him have it?”
“It’s let, and when it’s empty I’m going there myself,” Hannah said, and because she knew that Robert Corder was suddenly attentive to a conversation he had been pointedly ignoring, she added rather grandly. “People who own land ought to live on it.”
In a few moments of time, Robert Corder had to rearrange all his ideas about Miss Mole. He had seen her as a poor, homeless woman who must be glad of the shelter of his house, and now he learnt that she had property of her own: he had wondered at her independence of spirit and this was now explained: he had resented her manner of speech which was better than his own, her evidences of having read at least as widely as he had, the charming notes of her voice, which he acknowledged for the first time; he had been seeking a way of getting rid of her and found she could go when she chose, and he felt that he had been duped. He cast back in his mind to those occasions when he had tried to snub her and hoped she had been as unconscious of them as she had seemed, and he thought Mrs. Spenser-Smith had treated him unfairly in not warning him of Miss Mole’s real position in the world.
“Is it the farm you were brought up in?” he enquired.
“No, I sold that, but I kept a little place on the estate,” she said, and she began cutting second helpings for those who might want them.
“And where is this little property?” he asked genially.
“Over the river,” said Hannah, with a jerk of her head.
“In Somerset?”
“Yes, in Somerset.”
“And that’s where Mr. Pilgrim comes from,” Ruth said, looking at Ethel.
“It’s a large county,” said Hannah.
“A charming county,” said Robert Corder, giving Miss Mole the credit for it, and when the pudding came in, he ate his share. He had forgotten about the brandy. He had other things to think of.
Hannah went into the kitchen as soon as she could.
“Be off with you,” she said to Doris. “I’m going to do the washing up. You can stay out till half-past ten tonight, but not a minute later, and be sure to thank your young man for the biscuits.”
She stacked the plates neatly, collected scraps for Mr. Samson’s cats, washed the silver first and dried it before it could get smeary, and while she did this methodically but almost mechanically, she was thinking what a fool she was, a fool to come to Radstowe just because she loved the place, a bigger fool to have spoken about her cottage, and though she knew that her possession of it had impressed her employer, she also knew that his curiosity would not be content with the little she had told him.
“Fool, fool, fool,” she said, pushing the plates into the rack. She could not get into her cottage and, if she could, she had not a penny for food and firing. She was angry, too, at her ignorance of the conspiracy in which Howard and Ruth had been joined at dinner. They were protecting Ethel, but from what? And they had been so eager in it that they had almost roused their father’s suspicions. Well, she would find out. She could always find out anything she wanted to know; her difficulty was in keeping her own secrets, and she, who cared little enough for money, but knew its freeing value for the spirit, wished the china under her hands would change to gold.
She heard Ruth calling her and she did not answer. “If she wants me, she can come and fetch me,” she muttered. “She can’t tear herself away from that blessed man for a minute.”
But Ruth, divided in her affections, was not unfaithful. “Are you there, Miss Mole, dear?” she asked, hurrying into the kitchen.
“Yes, and Miss Mole dear’s very busy.”
“But we’re waiting for you—to open the presents. Uncle Jim said why weren’t you there, and Howard’s got something for you that you’ll like.”
“No, no. It’s a family affair. I’ll come in afterwards.”
“But I feel happier with you there, Moley, and safer. Ethel’s such an idiot. She looks as if she’s going to cry. I suppose she didn’t get a chance to speak to Mr. Pilgrim, or else he wasn’t nice to her. Or it may only be her way of being excited. That was a narrow escape at dinner, wasn’t it? I don’t know what Father would say if he knew she’s been at Mr. Pilgrim’s service, and on Christmas Day, too!”
Hannah did not know either, but what seemed to her of more importance was Mr. Pilgrim’s view of this attention and Ruth’s painfully clear vision of Ethel’s weakness.
XXVII
Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s party was usually on the twenty-seventh of December, a date on which no hopeful member of the chapel would have made any other engagement until the chance of an invitation had gone past. On Boxing Day, there was an entertainment at the Mission, demanding the attendance of the whole family and Doris, and Hannah was left alone in the house. Later, she was to look back at that solitary evening as at an oasis where she had rested between two stages of a journey and, as though
