“My own work, I am afraid, is of quite a private character. I am making a twin set for my niece’s little girl. The jumper is finished. This is the cardigan.”

Lady Mallett admired the stitch, asked a number of questions about little Josephine, about her brothers, her parents. Always ready to talk of her dear Ethel, Miss Silver responded, and it was not until some time had passed that they reverted to their more immediate surroundings, Miss Silver reproaching herself for having been led into taking up too much of Lady Mallett’s attention.

Nora Mallett gave her rolling laugh.

“Oh, I’m always interested in people, you know, and there isn’t really any particular hurry.” She carefully dropped her voice as she continued. “I just don’t want to get buttonholed by Mettie Eccles. We’re some sort of cousins, you know, and she always tries to lay down the law to me. As for getting Maggie to myself, I don’t suppose there’s a hope.” She turned to look across the room to where Miss Repton drooped over a pattern which she and at least three other people were endeavouring to accommodate to what was obviously too short a length of material. With a laugh and a shrug she turned back again. “They might as well give it up-and so might I! I wonder how long before Mettie-Oh, she’s going over to them. And now, my dear Miss Silver, you will see that the pattern will be made to behave itself and come out right. If Mettie wants things to go a certain way, well, they go that way. The only time she didn’t bring it off was the one that mattered the most to her, poor thing.”

Nora Mallett’s tongue was notoriously indiscreet, but she would probably not have proceeded any farther if it had not been for that something about the quality of Miss Silver’s listening which had caused her to receive so many confidences. And after all, there really wasn’t any secret about the fact that Mettie Eccles had always been devoted to Roger. The words slid off her tongue.

“Odd, isn’t it, but you stop being clever when you care too much, and that’s a fact. She would have made Roger just the sort of wife he ought to have had, and I don’t suppose it ever occurred to him. Men are so horribly stupid! There she was under his nose-he saw her every day of his life- and so he really never saw her at all! Have you met his wife?”

“I have seen her.”

Lady Mallett shrugged the ample shoulders under the black and white tweed.

“Oh well, then, there isn’t much need to say any more, is there?” Like so many people who make this type of remark, she then proceeded to say quite a number of things. “Thirty years younger than he is, and a great deal too ornamental! What was it one of those old poets said about someone being too bright and good for something or other? I don’t know that I should use the word good, but she is certainly too bright for Tilling Green.”

With a slight preliminary cough Miss Silver supplied the information that the poet was Wordsworth, and that what he really said was:

“Not too bright or good

For human nature’s daily food.”

Nora Mallett laughed good humouredly.

“Daily food! My dear, what a cannibal! You know, I’m being horribly indiscreet, but sometimes it’s a tremendous relief just to let go and say what you feel, and if you do it to a stranger it matters so much less than giving yourself and everyone else away to an intimate friend who is quite certain to pass it on.”

Miss Silver’s needles were moving briskly. She looked at the blue frill which was lengthening there and said,

“It is sometimes much easier to talk to a stranger.”

Lady Mallett nodded.

“The looker on who sees most of the game! Now tell me- what is everyone saying about the wedding? Do they think it’s just put off, or what?”

“Mr. Earle’s absence has occasioned some comment.”

Lady Mallett laughed.

“Well, it would, wouldn’t it! Gilbert goes off, the other young man stays put, and Val has got stars in her eyes. I don’t mind saying that I like Jason the better of the two, though I’m sure I don’t know why. He can be shockingly rude, and he has been making Val unhappy, but if she wants him she’d better have him, so long as he doesn’t go off into the blue again and leave her to break her heart.”

Since she had only seen Jason Leigh in the distance, Miss Silver could do no more than reply that it was extremely difficult to lay down any rules for happiness in marriage, but that kindness, unselfishness and mutual consideration must always be important factors.

“Most people would say that sounded very old-fashioned!”

Miss Silver smiled.

“The institution of marriage has been going on for a very long time.”

“And people still go making a mess of it! Well, some of us are lucky. When I married Tim you’ve no idea the things everybody said!” She laughed with gusto. “I said quite a few myself!-‘He had come up from nowhere,’ and the answer to that was-‘You can’t keep a good man down.’-‘Nobody had ever heard of his people.’ ‘Perhaps not,’ I told them, ‘but they are going to hear about him.’ ‘He’s nothing to look at.’ ‘Well, well,’ I said, ‘I never did care about having everything in the shop window.’ You know, I think that’s why I don’t like Gilbert Earle-there’s such a lot in his shop window that it sets me wondering whether there’s anything in the shop. In my husband’s case there was such a lot put away behind that I’m not through with finding out about it yet. The only thing that hasn’t panned out is the family we were going to have. It just never came along, which I suppose is the reason why Mettie and I have got to have our fingers in other people’s pies. If I’d had half a dozen children to worry about, I shouldn’t have had nearly so much time to run round interfering with my neighbours’ affairs.”

For a moment there was a brightness which might have been moisture in the fine dark eyes. Then she laughed and said,

“Oh well, I’ve got plenty on my plate for one woman. What were we talking about before I got off on to me? Scilla, wasn’t it? I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t wonder she’s bored to death down here. I’m not, and you wouldn’t be, but what about a girl who has never lived where there weren’t lamps in the streets, buses, neon lights, oodles of shops, and a cinema round every corner? Why, even when the war was on those poor women who were evacuated to this kind of place-it only took them about two minutes to get over being blown up in their beds and to start hankering after going back again. And of course one can see their point. As long as they weren’t actually being bombed, the town gave them everything they wanted-company, crowds, the fried fish shop, and lots and lots going on. And what had the country got to give them in exchange-dark frightening lanes, the general shop, no one to speak to, and nothing to do. You see what I mean? And Scilla hasn’t even got the possibility of bombs to put her off that life she used to live. I don’t pretend I like her, but I’m sorry for her all the same!”