Miss Mole quotes

Now and then she paused to look at them, puzzled that the reflected object should always seem more beautiful than the original, and eager to find some analogy to this experience in her mental processes.

“Not the thing itself, but its shadow,” she murmured, as she saw her own shadow going before her, and she nodded as though she had solved a problem.

She judged herself by the shadow she chose to project for her own pleasure and it was her business in life—and one in which she usually failed—to make other people accept her creation. Yes, she failed, she failed!

Lifting her level eyebrows, Hannah looked with amusement at her plate, where there was a scattering of crumbs.

“I was always reckless,” she murmured, and then, with an air of being politely eager to shift the conversation from herself, she asked effusively, “And how is Ernest? And how are the children? I should love to see the children!”

“They’re at school,” said Mrs. Spenser-Smith, promptly putting an end to Hannah’s hopes. “Ernest, as usual, is quite well. He overworks, of course,” she added, between pride and resignation. “And now, Hannah, what’s this about losing your situation?

“Don’t be vulgar, Hannah. I think jokes about marriage are in the very worst taste. Widdows? I’ve never heard of her.”

“Perhaps that’s why she’s so unpleasant,” Miss Mole said gently.

The robin-brightness of Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s brown eyes was dimmed with disapproval. She was not stupid, though she chose to let Hannah think her so, and she said severely, “According to you, Hannah, every employer you’ve ever had was objectionable.”

“There’s no reason why Mrs. Gibson should do it.”

“Fear,” said Hannah, “is one of the strongest human emotions.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Mr. Blenkinsop said with marked politeness.

He was glad to have a definite fault to find. “That seems to me both pampering and wasteful. I don’t understand this innovation. She has been used to going to sleep in the dark.”

“Yes,” said Hannah quietly, “and waking up in it.”

“And waking up in it—certainly,” he said.

… man, but he might be a rich one, and if he was so free with his kittens for a little girl, she said to herself in the vulgar manner that made Lilla wince, he might be equally free with his money for an older one.

“Upon my word,” she said aloud, “I believe I’d marry anyone who asked me⁠—except Robert Corder,”

and she chuckled as she got into bed and chuckled again when she remembered that she was lying on Wilfrid’s mattress.

“She’d think it was lying.”

“Not lying. Fiction,” Hannah said.

“Yes, fiction,” Ruth agreed willingly. “But how,” she cried, “am I going to know when it really happened and when it didn’t?”

“And still better to be brave. Think of me and the burglar!”

Ruth was not to be comforted. “That’s only a story. This is a bad dream that keeps coming back.”

“My poor lamb,” Hannah said, “you shall sleep in my room if I have to sleep on the floor.”

“No,” said Hannah, “they weren’t, because I wasn’t.

It isn’t the days that are dull, it’s the people who can’t see them properly.

What on earth do you think I should do in this house if I couldn’t make amusement for myself?”

“And you’re disgusting about Father, and perfectly ridiculous about Miss Mole.” Ethel’s voice was getting beyond control. “Why should you think she’s such a brilliant conversationalist? I’ve never noticed it.”

“Ah, she’s like old Samson’s parrot. She can do it when she chooses. But then, I know I’m prejudiced about her.”

Hannah raised her head from her darning and looked coolly from one to the other. “I don’t know what your manners will be like on Thursday,” she said quietly, “but I hope they won’t be what they are now.

“

If you want to be safe, you’d better be dead.

”

“But she doesn’t! I mean—it just slipped out. Miss Mole, two people wouldn’t make such a terrible lot of difference, would they?”

“With due notice, I can feed a regiment,” Hannah said grandly.

“There!” said Ruth, looking at her father boldly.

Miss Mole shook her head, smiling as she would have smiled at a child who could not be blamed for his stupidity.

“I wouldn’t kick a puppy at anyone’s request.”

“Puppy is a good word in this connection,” he said, and Hannah realised that his temper was very bad and that though he seemed impervious to anything but petty slights to his own dignity, he might have troubles worthy of sympathy.

Hannah sighed.

“Why do people want to give each other hell?”

“Because it makes them feel like God. And it’s so easy. Now the uncle—”

… support, but there was something flattering in his desire to see her, and something touching, and, as she thought of him, who looked so self-sufficient, she was bound to wonder if Robert Corder, also, was not as much a baby as the rest of them.

Mr. Blenkinsop was a solemn infant who asked for what he wanted and Robert Corder was a spoilt one who expected his needs to be divined.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Then she looked up at him and laughed.

“I’ve spoilt your Christmas pudding and now I’ve spoilt your goose.”

Mr. Corder suddenly condescended to jest. “Or, as you might say, you have cooked it.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hannah said, and wished she could look at Wilfrid.

Mr. Corder’s moments of consideration always arrived when he was annoyed with someone else.

“I suppose she was at chapel?” he went on.

“What does that matter to me?

I notice them myself, and every night I have a little reception for them.

They sit at one end of the bed and I sit at the other and I look at my nice straight toes and all the little bones of my feet and think of the manifold works of God. It’s not conceit. I didn’t make them.”

“Would you like her to marry him?”

“I’d like her to marry anybody, so long as he didn’t drink or knock her about,”

he said, and increased Hannah’s respect for his astuteness.

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 held them like that for a few seconds and then, satisfied with this small triumph, she dispersed the thoughts that had been crowding into speech and smiled benevolently at all three, remembering that they were children.

“Because he’s a dear boy,” she said, “and I like him.”

“Because he’s a man!” Ethel said with stubborn courage, and Hannah looked him up and down teasingly and said: “Yes, he’ll be a man, some day.”

“Because he’s a man!” Ethel said with stubborn courage, and Hannah looked him up and down teasingly and said:

“Yes, he’ll be a man, some day.”

No one answered her smile, and she felt that there was an influence in the room of which she knew nothing, and she believed it was stealthy and malign.

“But it’s so exciting. You don’t know what’s going to happen to it.”

“Well,” said Hannah, “I never thought I should die conceited about my looks and, if they’ve pleased Mr. Pilgrim, I shall also die contented.”

“I don’t know about pleasing him. At first I thought it was that and so did Ethel, and she stopped giggling, but afterwards, when he’d gone, I found out that he’d been more interested in your cousin.

Corder to have him to the house! That was the fault of Mrs. Corder who could hear every word spoken in the study and could do nothing more. It would be cowardly and cruel not to help her, moreover

Hannah knew that what was not worth risking was not worth keeping, and while she was prepared to risk, she was also prepared to fight.

She sat there, waiting for Ethel to return, but it was Wilfrid who came in first, and, at once, she said, “You did well to give me that brooch and remind me that Cupid is blind.”

She lay, rigid under this determination, and suddenly, unawares, she began to laugh, quietly, with her mouth against the bedclothes. Mr. Blenkinsop had always made her laugh and she would laugh now, if she never did it again.

It was queer to love a man because he made you laugh without intention, or was the laughter born of love and the love of a conviction that you could trust him to the end of time?

She did not know, but her laughter ceased, and the suspicion had become reality, and it no longer hurt her.

She did not know, but her laughter ceased, and the suspicion had become reality, and it no longer hurt her.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” she said aloud

, and she raised dubious eyebrows above her closed eyelids and turned down the corners of her mouth, for she had made previous trial of giving and not receiving.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” she said aloud, and she raised dubious eyebrows above her closed eyelids and turned down the corners of her mouth, for she had made previous trial of giving and not receiving.

“But it depends on the person you give to,”

she said, and with surprising quickness, with more surprising happiness, she went to sleep.

“Well, I suppose it won’t last.”

“No, nothing lasts. That’s why I’m doing it.”

“You mean—to save the sheets from wearing out?”

“Your cousin seems to have been living in her own little house in a part of the country known to Mr. Pilgrim. It’s an odd coincidence that you should both have a little house in the country.”

“Not at all. She was in mine.”

All Hannah’s desire to enlighten Mr. Corder had gone. This was better sport, and the rules of the game demanded that she should take risks, but save her life.