It was comforting to know that God and she understood each other, she told herself, with a cynical smile for her presumption, and it was strange to think that Mr. Pilgrim was probably as sure of God’s nature as she was, and, like her, made it fit his prejudices; strange that a God who had as many characters as the men and women who sought Him in times of trouble and forgot Him in their happiness, should yet have the power of giving peace to bewildered spirits; strange, too, that the dreary dining-room felt like a home. The resuscitated fire babbled its cheerful inanities, Uncle Jim’s corrected gas did its best to do as it had been told, the almost inaudible ticking of the marble clock had a faintly friendly sound. Hannah’s peace might only have been that of exhaustion, but she believed it was something more and, in any case, it would serve her turn which was to fit her to waylay Ethel before she could rush upstairs and begin the process known to Ruth as banging, and persuade her to accept her father’s bargain.
In the meantime, Hannah likened herself again to her little ship, becalmed after a storm, and using the calm for overhauling her condition, in readiness for the next misadventure. The misadventure would come. Small lonely ships which set out on perilous voyages, must be prepared for worse treatment than bigger ones receive, especially when they are hampered by bad records, but, changing the metaphor, Hannah refused to be the dog with a bad name who, foreseeing hanging, waits passively for his punishment. There was work for her to do, and though there was humour in the thought that she would not be allowed to do it if Robert Corder knew about her past, and that the time might yet come when he would look back with horror at the confidences he had made to the unscrupulous Miss Mole, she was not going to lose her pleasure while it lasted, and she was proud of her little triumphs, culminating, on this day which had seemed so unrelievedly black, in Robert Corder’s asking of a favour, and its inevitable effect of making Hannah like him rather better.
She was thinking that she might even learn to like Mr. Pilgrim, when a sound at the front door drove her into the hall, and there was Ethel, with a new stubborn look on her face. The study door opened a minute later, but it was discreetly shut by an unseen hand, for Hannah was asking Ethel if she had had any supper, saying she had fasted herself since five o’clock, and proposing that they should go into the larder and see what they could find.
This was the sort of greeting Ethel had not looked for and, braced to meet abuse, she collapsed under kindness to the extent of accompanying Miss Mole into the kitchen. “I’ve been to Highfields Chapel,” she said, anxious to sustain her attitude of independence, “and then I went to see Patsy Withers.”
“But she’s the one who’s been telling tales about you.”
“That’s why I went.”
“H’m,” said Hannah, “people who tell tales seem to have an attraction for you. And just look what they’ve done to the joint while I was out! Mangled it! And wasted,” she eyed it calculatingly, “at least half a pound, I should say.”
“It may have been wasted, but it wasn’t eaten,” Ethel said, and Hannah looked at her with quick appreciation, but Ethel was not trying to be funny, she was merely stating a fact. “And that reminds me,” she went on, and now it was she who looked at Hannah, “I met Mr. Blenkinsop just now.”
“Why does it remind you? Oh, I suppose he made part of the midday meal. Well, what was he doing?”
“Having a walk, he said.”
“I should have thought he’d walked enough.”
“You never told us you were going out with him.”
“You never told us you were going to Mr. Pilgrim’s chapel. I don’t think we’ll have any of this reminiscent mutton. I’ll warm some soup. And was Miss Withers pleased to see you?”
“She was more pleased to see me go,” Ethel said with her unconscious humour. “Mr. Blenkinsop was walking up and down on the other side of the road.”
“Dear me! I’m afraid I’ve wound him up and he can’t run down. And did Mr. Pilgrim preach a good sermon?”
“Yes,” Ethel said unwillingly, “but that’s quite a different thing.”
“I don’t follow you,” Hannah said politely as she stirred the soup.
“I mean, going out with Mr. Blenkinsop is quite different from going to a service.”
“That was what I hoped,” Hannah admitted.
“And I don’t see why I shouldn’t go where I can get—get what I want.”
“Ah, don’t try too hard for it,” Hannah said, and she spoke dreamily because
