Miss Mole

was a tragedian and he did not spare himself. The long poem he recited was all too short for the enraptured Hannah, and if the clapping at the end did not express a correspondence with her own feelings, Mr. Pilgrim was not a prey to doubts. He wiped his face with the freedom of the man who has obviously done his utmost, and Mrs. Spenser-Smith managed, with great adroitness, to start another game as she went forward to thank him. Ethel was thanking him already; she had no doubts either, but, for the first time in the history of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s parties, there were no charades. The games went merrily on until Miss Patsy Withers’s elder sister was whispered towards the piano and the opening bars of Sir Roger de Coverley were played. Robert Corder partnered Mrs. Spenser-Smith, Ernest tucked the hand of the shabbiest of the spinsters under his kind arm and seemed to regret that he could not take care of all the other women who were not wanted, and Hannah, smiling gaily at him as he passed and trying to look as though she did not want to dance, saw Ethel beaming in her place opposite to Mr. Pilgrim and Ruth happy with her Uncle Jim.

“Could you bear it?” Mr. Blenkinsop asked her crossly.

“I should love it.”

“I generally get away before this begins, I feel such a fool, capering down the room with my hands out.”

“From capra, a goat,” Hannah murmured to herself. “But if we’re capering together⁠—”

“That’s what I thought,” he admitted gloomily. “Is there any chance of walking home with you? It would do me good to talk to somebody about that recitation.”

“Somebody?” Hannah said sharply. “Try Mrs. Ridding. Yes, try her as a sort of test. There ought to be a preliminary examination for every vocation, you know, and if she fails in the subject of Mr. Pilgrim, I should plough her altogether.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Blenkinsop said with a trace of sulkiness, as they took their places for the dance.

“And anyhow,” Hannah bent towards him to whisper, “Mr. Corder doesn’t approve of followers. It would embarrass me to be escorted across the Downs by a single gent. I have to pay for my pleasures, Mr. Blenkinsop!”

There was more annoyance than amusement in his smile. Apparently this sort of banter was not to his taste and, either in expression of his disapproval, or in deference to her wish, there was no sign of him when the Beresford Road party started across the Downs followed by Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s regret that, for some unexplained reason, she could not send them in the car.

They went in pairs, like a girls’ school; Uncle Jim with Howard, and Ethel and Ruth in an accidental companionship which left their father with Miss Mole.

“This is the first time we have not had charades,” he burst out, like a disappointed child. “I can’t remember one of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s parties when we haven’t had charades after supper. We choose a word, Miss Mole, and as I am always expected to be the leader of one of the sides, I’d given a little thought to the matter, to save time. I don’t grudge that and the whole thing is of no importance, but I must say I think the party was not quite so successful this year.”

“Mrs. Spenser-Smith is a clever woman,” Hannah said.

“Certainly. Yes. But I think she showed less cleverness than usual.”

“Clever⁠—and considerate, to us and to Mr. Pilgrim. He would have expected to be the leader of the other side. We had seen him as a tragedian; we might have had to listen to him being funny. Considerate to all of us, but more considerate to him,” she added in a slow, droll tone, and Mr. Corder laughed so suddenly and loudly that his daughters looked round as they walked in front, and Howard and Uncle Jim, still further ahead, slackened their pace and turned to see who had joined the little company and made Robert Corder laugh as he seldom laughed in the family.

“So you didn’t enjoy the recitation?” he asked with some eagerness.

“It was one of the brightest moments of my life,” she replied, “but then, I’m afraid I am not charitable.”

There was a pause before Robert Corder, having digested this, said kindly, “But I’m glad to find you have a sense of humour, Miss Mole. A sense of humour, I sometimes think, is as valuable a possession as brains.”

“Then I must try to cultivate mine,” Hannah said.

“However,” he said, following her into the tramcar in which the others already sat, four tired-looking people in the otherwise empty, brightly lit conveyance, “I am sorry we both had to exercise it tonight. I’m afraid Mr. Pilgrim made himself rather ridiculous and it was lucky for him that his own people did not hear him. Though,” he added with satisfaction, “they might have missed the absurdity. They are not a highly intelligent little community,” and putting his hand into his pocket, for the fares, he fell into talk with the conductor who, like most of the conductors in Radstowe, was an acquaintance.

Hannah saw that, to the young man clipping the tickets, Robert Corder was a fine reverend with no nonsense about him, and she knew it was not fair to judge him by the only side he showed her. It seemed to her that he had to be given a certain character before he could live up to it, and that if his children would see him as the conductor did, he would be the kind of father he thought he was. Perhaps everybody was like that, she mused, but when she looked at Uncle Jim, she saw a man unaffected by opinion and quite unconscious of himself as a possible object of interest to anyone. That, probably, was the happy thing to be, and it was what poor Ethel certainly was not. Like her father, but without his self-assurance and with less stability, and