Miss Mole

and she would have to refuse Ruth a pleasure which, for her, would be something like a day in Radstowe had been for Hannah, and Hannah herself, full of shrinking though she was, had a great longing to see her own country, to sit in the train and watch the city and its suburbs giving way to fields and woods, flat meadows cut by dykes and villages dominated by their stately perpendicular churches, just as she had watched all these giving way to the promise of Radstowe, that fairy place of streets and towers, bridges, water and ships. She would get her business done as soon as possible, and then she would cross the fields to the old farm. She did not know who owned it now, but if they had any likeness to her own wary but kindly people, they would let her have a peep into the kitchen, where she ought to have been living with the red-cheeked children; they would let her stroll round the farm buildings and have a look at the cows and, as she sat in the Beresford Road dining-room, darning the everlasting socks and stockings, she fancied she could smell the sweet breath of the cows, and the sweetness of wallflowers, old man and pinks, in the little garden where the bear had lurked. There would be no flowers blooming now, unless there was a chance primrose on a sheltered bank, but the cows would be there, and she looked at Ruth, sitting on her feet in the old saddlebag armchair, and reading with absorption, and thought it would be cruel to go without the child. Was this an excuse for procrastination? she asked herself, as there came a loud knock on the front door which made Ruth look up and say: “Postman, Moley. It may be the fortune.”

“What fortune?” Ethel asked. She was trying to alter one of her many unsatisfactory dresses, but she was inept, and presently she would ask Miss Mole to gather her scattered pieces into some semblance of a whole.

“If it’s the fortune,” Hannah said, going towards the door, “I’ll give you each⁠—well, it depends, but I’ll give you each something.”

“And she would, you know,” Ruth said, looking gravely at Ethel.

The knock had drawn Robert Corder from his study and he found Miss Mole, in the hall, holding a letter. “The postman?” he asked.

“No. This came by hand, as they say, as though a postman hadn’t got one.”

“For me?”

“No, for me,” she said and she opened and read it while he stood there.

“Not bad news, I hope,” he said.

“Not at all,” she replied, smiling at him as she tucked the letter into the bosom of her dress, and returned to the dining-room.

The smile was still on her lips, though she did not know it until Ruth cried: “And I do believe it really is the fortune!”

“Good gracious! Do I look as pleased as all that?”

“Not now. Now you’re frowning a little. Isn’t it something nice?”

“That depends on one’s point of view,” Hannah said, and Ruth resumed her reading. There were times when she knew it was of no use to ask Miss Mole any questions.

Hannah wondered, and was half annoyed at her satisfaction, but a day in the country with Mr. Blenkinsop would be a day of inward and outward laughter: she could not look at him without a bubbling feeling of pleasure, even his handwriting made her smile and, if she gave him the day he asked for, she must postpone her own expedition. This, in itself, was a relief, and to be looked after as she knew Mr. Blenkinsop would look after her, to have her ticket taken for her, to be asked if she were tired, was an alluring prospect to Hannah, who had spent so much of her time in looking after other people. But Mr. Blenkinsop took a good deal for granted: he assumed, and no doubt she had given him cause, that her interest in Mrs. Ridding was considerable, but to take her into the country to inspect the little house he had found⁠—that house, which, no doubt, was to be Mrs. Ridding’s refuge from her husband⁠—was a dependence on her judgment which that lady might resent, and it was a deliberate involving of Mr. Corder’s housekeeper in an affair which would do her reputation no good. This care for her reputation satisfactorily explained her slight feeling of irritation with Mr. Blenkinsop, but it did not influence her desire to oblige him. Such invitations did not often come her way and, irritated or not, she liked Mr. Blenkinsop, and the thought of his companionship, preoccupied though he might be, for a whole day in the country, with bare branches against grey skies and pale fields slipping into brown ones, and the chance of a primrose, was more than enough to make her smile.

Mr. Blenkinsop hoped the following Sunday would not be an impossible day for her. He was afraid it would be awkward but⁠—he was quite playful in the excitement which had made him begin his note without any formality of address⁠—he also hoped she would be able to produce the usual grandmother or aunt whose illness or funeral called her away. Hannah, however, did not need these ladies, for she had a tenant, and Mr. Corder’s prejudice against Sunday pleasures would not be applied to business if she explained that it could be transacted on no other day. Her trouble was not Mr. Corder; it was lack of suitable clothing for this outing. She had the shoes, but she had no well cut tweeds, no gay scarf and jaunty hat. Life was simpler for men. Their festive occasions were not brightened or dimmed by the clothes question; it was dull for them, but easy, and Hannah looked at her battered headgear and sighed. She counted her little savings and saw the coins as so many meals and so many nights of shelter: it would be madness to spend a penny, but