Uncle Jim and Howard had been for a long walk in the country and she supposed Howard’s affairs had been discussed and they had arranged their plan of action. She could do nothing more in that business, but she had determined to try a new method with Robert Corder, to present herself to him as the person who understood, and so to take the burden of his indignation from those who were less able to bear it.
“But I shan’t succeed,” she said sadly, knowing how far short her actions always fell of her intentions, and then, remembering the wrong she had done Mrs. Corder and the reproachful, half humorous gaze she met when she went into the study, she rejected the idea of failure. Robert Corder himself was doing what he could to help her. He had been very affable since he learnt she was a lady of property and she had not thought it necessary to tell him how small and poor that property was, and perhaps he shared her own desire to be kind and was frustrated by the same cause, the insistent craving to be impressive, and as there was not room for two such people in the same house and one must make way for the other, it was Hannah, who flattered herself on her superior sight, who must stand aside while he went blindly on. Nevertheless, he had his own kind of cleverness. He had been silent about Mr. Samson until that very afternoon, when he had casually mentioned that he had called on the old gentleman, and implied that Mrs. Corder had always hidden her light under a bushel and been chary of speaking about her good deeds, which he was glad to continue if he could, but that what the wife of a minister could properly do was perhaps not quite suitable work for an unmarried lady.
“I never thought of it as work, and he likes me,” Hannah had cried.
“Is that a compliment?” he asked gently.
“He liked Mrs. Corder, too.”
“If you think it over, Miss Mole, I am sure you will see the difference,” he replied, and it was all Hannah could do to refrain from saying that Mr. Samson’s affection for both of them was grounded on his partiality for what he called misfits, and that Mrs. Corder’s good deeds, in his connection, had been a charity towards herself. Hannah was looking forward to Mr. Samson’s account of the interview. She would have been interested to know that Mr. Corder, who was a follower though he thought himself a leader, had been influenced, against his will, by the old man’s high praise of Miss Mole which fell into line with Samuel Blenkinsop’s attentions and the books which had not escaped Mr. Corder’s notice, with Wilfrid’s and Ruth’s affection and Ethel’s dependence on her judgment, and with the little property in Somerset. The fact that he continued to consider Mr. Samson a disreputable old person with a loose tongue and no respect for the status of a minister, did not affect his changing estimate of the woman he could not help distrusting. She was undoubtedly a woman of some character and he hoped she would not show too much of it at Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s party. He was afraid she might be too clever at the games or too lively in demeanour, for she was his housekeeper, after all, and he did not want Mrs. Spenser-Smith or Miss Patsy Withers to imagine she was more, and he was sorry Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s truly Christian hospitality should have urged her to include Miss Mole in the invitation. This was the little shadow on the prospect of an evening towards which he looked forward as much as Ethel and more than Ruth did. He knew his people, loving him when he was in the pulpit, loved him still more when he was out of it, and there was a rich pleasure in letting them see him play at musical chairs with the eagerness of a boy, act in the charades, and dance Sir Roger de Coverley, with a slightly comic gaiety, before the party came to an end with the singing of Auld Lang Syne.
Ruth had her own troubles about the party. There was the usual trouble about Ethel who giggled and looked too pleasant and wore too many bits of jewellery and would probably have one of her tempers when they got home; there was the difficulty of pretending to herself that her father was always a jolly man and of trying not to feel half ashamed of him in his frock coat; there was the disappointment that Uncle Jim would not be in evening clothes, and, worse still, had cheerfully confessed that he had possessed none for many years, and allied to this worry, was Miss Mole’s black silk dress with the jet trimmings. Ethel’s Chinese silk had been made up hastily by an obliging little dressmaker who went to the chapel, and Miss Mole had finished Ruth’s, and they were the nicest dresses they had ever had; Howard would be in his dinner jacket, but the appearance of the contingent from Beresford Road would be completely spoilt by Uncle Jim’s blue serge and Miss Mole’s black silk. Her father’s frock coat did not matter so much. People were used to it and he was a minister, but a favourite uncle in blue serge, rather short in the sleeves, and Miss Mole, who had promised Ruth they would have all sorts of jokes about the party afterwards, so that the more they hated it, the more fun they would get in the end, Miss Mole looking housekeeperish and Uncle Jim, looking all wrong, would make a mock of the beautiful new dresses; they would look like the accidents they were.
