‘If you wouldn’t mind coming into the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s warm in there. We’ve a nice front room, but the fire isn’t lit.’

A poor thing she might be, but she had yet to be ashamed of taking anyone into her kitchen. All nicely tidied up it was, and the children back at school. She had her chair by the fire and a footstool in front of it, and a second chair that could be pulled up for the visitor. She was glad to get back into the warm, and that was a fact. It was cold in the passage, and she felt the cold these days.

Miss Silver looked at her in a sympathetic manner and said,

‘I am afraid you are not very strong, Mrs. Harbord. You must not let me tire you. My name is Silver – Miss Maud Silver. I thought perhaps we might talk for a little. It must be lonely for you here with your daughter-in-law out all day and the children at school.’

Mrs. Harbord said,

‘Yes, it’s lonely. Only I don’t know that I could do with the children all the time – two of them, and twins. And I don’t know which of them makes the most noise, the boy or the girl. Just turned eight they are – and lively – you wouldn’t believe it.’

Miss Silver smiled in a friendly manner.

‘It sounds as if they were very strong and healthy.’

A gleam of pride appeared on Mrs. Harbord’s face.

‘Oh, they’re healthy,’ she said. ‘They take after their mother. Now my poor son, he was always ailing from a baby. Died when the twins were three months old, and what we’d have done I don’t know, only I had my health, and Florrie went out to work. My old mother was alive then, and she’d mind the babies. I don’t think I’d come to being the one to sit at home and be a burden. The doctor, he says there’s no reason why I can’t get well, but I don’t, and that’s a fact.’

‘I am sure you did not think your mother a burden when she was looking after the babies and making it possible for you and your daughter-in-law to work.’

Mrs. Harbord shook her head. Her mother had been a very decided old lady. She would have made short work of anyone who set up to consider her a burden. Even Florrie had been under her thumb.

‘She was able for more than what I am,’ she said.

Before she knew quite how it came about she found herself telling Miss Silver all about her mother. There were incidents which she had not recalled for years. Miss Silver displayed great skill in steering her past deathbeds and family illnesses to such cheerful occasions as weddings, christenings, and outings. Mrs. Wild had appeared at the twins’ christening in a bonnet with two black ostrich feathers which nobody knew she possessed.

‘Down in the bottom of her box she’d got them, and a wonder the moths hadn’t been at them. “Why mother,” I said, “wherever did you get those feathers?” And it seems my Uncle Jim brought them from South Africa when he came home after the Boer war. And just to think she’d never had them out all those years! Not when poor Father died, nor my husband, nor poor Ernie. And she tosses her head and says feathers is for joyful occasions, not for funerals, and she’s going to wear them for the twins, poor little fatherless things, and may be they’ll bring them a bit of good luck.’ She broke off to give a heavy sigh and say, ‘Oh, well, I had my health then. I could bicycle out the three miles and do a day’s work and not so much as feel tired at the end of it.’

Miss Silver said in a sympathetic voice,

‘You used to work at Underhill, did you not, with the Miss Benevents?’

Mrs. Harbord’s flow of reminiscence was arrested. She looked sideways and said,

‘I’m sure I never mentioned it.’

‘There was no reason why you should not do so.’

‘I left on account of my health.’ Mrs. Harbord’s voice shook. ‘And I was never one to talk.’

Miss Silver looked at her.

‘What would there be to talk about?’

Mrs. Harbord’s hand went up to her lips and stayed there. Her eyes shifted. She said,

‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’ And then quite suddenly words came pouring out. ‘I don’t know anything – why should I? I just went there for the cleaning – there wasn’t anything for me to talk about.’

It was no use, she couldn’t go on looking away. She had to turn her eyes back again to meet Miss Silver’s. She did so, and found them very clear and kind.

‘Pray do not distress yourself, Mrs. Harbord. But when you have something on your mind, I think you know that you cannot get rid of it by pretending it is not there. I think that you have something on your mind. I think it has been there for a long time, and that it is frightening you and preventing you from getting well. You began to tell Mrs. Kean about it, did you not, but you did not go on.’

Mrs. Harbord still had that shaking hand pressed against her lips. It came down now and went out groping to the arm of the chair. She said in a startled voice,

‘Ellen Kean – did she send you? I thought – ’

‘No, she did not send me. You asked her to come and see you because you were very ill and you had something on your mind, but when she came you did not tell her very much.’

Mrs. Harbord said in a choked voice,

‘She came in – and she sat there – and she didn’t believe a word I said. She come like it was her Christian duty to come, and because I sent for her. She’d gone up in the world, and I’d gone down, but we went to school together. There isn’t much I don’t know about Ellen Kean, and her duty is what she’d always do. But when it comes to bowels and mercies, Ellen hasn’t got them, and that’s a fact. Sat there and looked at me as cold as ice and told me I was talking nonsense. So I didn’t have any more to say.’

‘That was when you told her that the stories about Alan Thompson were not true?’

Mrs. Harbord’s voice sharpened.

‘I don’t say there wasn’t plenty that might have been true. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain, and the way the young women ran after him was enough to turn anyone’s head. And not only the young ones neither, but I’m not talking about that. Only what I had on my mind and what I told Ellen Kean was gospel truth, and she hadn’t any cause to disbelieve. me. You said you didn’t come from her?’

Miss Silver made a slight negative movement of the head. Her voice, her look, her manner were having a tranquillizing effect. Mrs. Harbord’s breathing was more normal and she no longer clutched the arm of her chair. The time had come for a more open approach. She said,

‘I am not acquainted with Mrs. Kean. It is Mr. Puncheon who has asked me to come and see you. He is very much troubled at the stigma which rests upon his stepson’s name. It would be a great relief to his mind if he could know that it was not deserved. His late wife felt the whole thing very deeply. He feels that he owes it to her to do what he can to clear her son. It was said, I believe, that Alan Thompson had stolen money and a diamond brooch from the Miss Benevents before his disappearance, and what you told Mrs. Kean was that he was innocent.’

Mrs. Harbord flushed.

‘I told her, and she didn’t believe me!’

‘You told her that he had never left Underhill.’

Mrs. Harbord began to cry.

‘I didn’t ought to have said that. And I wouldn’t, only for her sitting there being so unbelieving. Because it stands to reason he must have gone. Only he didn’t take Miss Cara’s diamond brooch, for I saw it afterwards, lying there just inside the drawer of Miss Olivia’s looking-glass – one of those old-fashioned ones, up on a stand with a lot of little drawers, and she always kept the middle one locked. Only this time it wasn’t. The keys were there sticking in it, and my duster caught them and pulled it out. And there was the brooch they said he took – a kind of a spray with diamond flowers and leaves. Miss Cara wore it a lot of an evening, and for best. And there it was in Miss Olivia’s drawer, and Mr. Alan’s coin that Miss Cara gave him lying there with it.’