The voice of her new friend, bidding her good night, followed Miss Hannah Mole as she went down the garden path, and the laurel bushes, as she brushed by them, repeated in a whisper, yet with a strang...

At this hour when it was too early for dinner and too late for tea, the shop was almost empty and a lady who was sitting in full view of the door and who started at Hannah’s entry, immediately repress...

All over Upper Radstowe, in late springtime, the pavements are strewn with flecks of colour, as though there had been a wedding in every house, for petals of pink and white, purple and yellow, lie the...

This was the story which had to be rearranged for Lilla’s benefit, but Hannah trusted to the inspiration of the moment and wasted no time which could be spent on the beauty of the October day. The sun...

The wind had risen strongly as night came on and Hannah crossed the Downs under swaying branches and swirling leaves. The football-players, the riders, the children had all gone home; lamps edged the ...

Beresford Road and Prince’s Road meet at a point just below Albert Square, and as they are both on the western side of Nunnery Road, where the tramcars go up to the Downs and down to the city, they ca...

Mrs. Gibson’s greengrocer undertook to deliver Miss Mole’s box at the house in Beresford Road and thither, in the dusk, Miss Mole walked, following the cart and feeling that this was her own funeral a...

Family loyalties and disloyalties are like currents in the sea: they intermingle, jostle each other, change places and are diverted or united according to the strength of the obstacles they meet, and ...

It was a long time since Hannah had lived with a family. After an exhausting experience in which she had battled with half-a-dozen riotous children, an ailing mother and a father who tried to be confi...

Seeing those two at breakfast, the next morning, no one would have guessed that their relationships had changed. Ruth was too shy, Hannah was too wily, and they were both too cautious, to behave diffe...

If Hannah had chosen to look for them, she could have found as many reasons and excuses for Robert Corder’s peculiarities as for those of Ethel and Ruth. Robert Corder himself did not seek excuses; he...

Ruth’s door was open when Hannah went up to bed and there was no light in her room. Had Mr. Corder been up and blown it out, in the cause of discipline? She was ready to rush downstairs and upbraid hi...

Ruth had not learnt to accept imperfection. She saw it all round her and she was in a constant state of rebellion against it. She saw it in herself, in her father, in Ethel, in the house and in her ci...

For once, Hannah’s hands were idle. She lay back in the armchair by the dining-room fire with a book on her knee, and Ruth, glancing up from her work, now and then, saw that her eyes were often shut. ...

That night, Ethel left the Girls’ Club in the charge of Miss Patsy Withers and another helper and went home earlier than usual. She had a headache and felt miserable. It was cold in the tramcar, after...

Leaving a defiant maidservant and a nervous child on the top landing, Hannah descended to the one below, where she found Wilfrid waiting for her in his bedroom doorway and listening, between apprehens...

The shadow that fell on Hannah the next morning was not the one of Robert Corder’s displeasure. It was a darker one that hung over her all the week and, on the evening of the supper-party, she slipped...

A fortnight later Hannah walked across the downs to pay her call on Lilla. Robert Corder had again reminded her of this duty and she was willing enough to perform it. The shadow cast by Mr. Pilgrim ha...

It was pleasant to see Ruth looking happier and Hannah subdued a sort of jealousy of Uncle Jim, whose advent had succeeded where her own presence had failed, and she determined to be happy too. It was...

Mr. Blenkinsop would have been more tactful and more chivalrous if he had explained his presence by pretending he had been waiting for this arrival. He did nothing of the kind and, after shaking hands...

The arrival of Howard Corder unfortunately coincided with the arrival of Mr. Blenkinsop’s letter, and what should have been a glad little family gathering had Robert Corder’s views of the younger gene...

Robert Corder’s work took him out of the house for a great part of the day, but it also brought him back at times when a business man is in his office and knows nothing of domestic affairs until he re...

Hannah accepted life as she found it, she accepted imperfection, but this did not prevent her from pondering on human existence in her own fashion. Finding pleasure and excitement in little things, be...

Hannah had the homeless and the childless person’s dislike for Christmas. There were a few people from whom, in the course of her career, she had not been completely severed, and to these she wrote, b...

Christmas Eve had dawned long before Hannah went to sleep. She could not help thinking about Robert Corder and though, having learnt certain forms of self-control, she did not toss and turn on Wilfrid...

On Christmas morning, by candlelight, Doris brought an early cup of tea to Miss Mole, with an ornamental box of biscuits, from her young man and herself, on the tray. “My friend says it’s the least we...

Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s party was usually on the twenty-seventh of December, a date on which no hopeful member of the chapel would have made any other engagement until the chance of an invitation had gon...

Howard ought not to have spoken in that cheerful manner or to have looked so unabashed when he came downstairs, so unusually lively and determined that the reproaches died on Robert Corder’s lips. Mis...

After supper, one of those little rumours, which start mysteriously and surprise no one so much as the people to whom they refer, began running about Mrs. Spenser-Smith’s drawing-room. For a skilfully...

Hannah’s cousin Hilda had developed into a definite person before Hannah went to bed, but it was just as well to know everything about her and, when it was all settled, Hannah liked her very much and ...

To see Robert Corder reassuring his children, gravely taking this new burden on himself and shouldering it courageously, was for Hannah, rather like watching a man palming off the work of an artist as...

In the few days that passed between Uncle Jim’s departure and Wilfrid’s return, there was an atmosphere of unnatural sweetness in the Corders’ house. Ethel’s gratitude to her father, for refraining fr...

Wilfrid was to return that evening and, as Hannah walked home slowly, she was glad to think she would see him soon. He, if anyone could, would restore her liking for herself. Her little outing had bee...

Hannah studied the sky carefully on Saturday night. It promised well for the next day, and when she had finished with the stars she lowered her gaze to the housetops and tried to decide from which of ...

Hannah went into the cold, dreary dining-room. Long ago, she had removed the dejected fern from the middle of the table and Uncle Jim had improved the behaviour of the gas, but now the fire was nearly...

Sitting by the fire and waiting for Ethel’s arrival, Hannah was almost annoyed to find that the acute stage of her suffering had passed before she had had an opportunity to lie on her bed and cry unti...

She ought to have told Mr. Blenkinsop to give up all thoughts of the little house. It was ill-omened, it was a place in which no happiness would be found. She ought to have told him that, and to have ...

It was fortunate for Hannah that Robert Corder heard her story from Mr. Pilgrim. From another, he might have listened to it receptively, but from Mr. Pilgrim whom he disliked, who had spoilt Mrs. Spen...

Ruth had had one lovely day, marred, it is true, by Ethel’s outburst, but mended, afterwards, by the talk of those voyages she was to make with Hannah, and on the next day, Wilfrid had a surprise for ...

“I have just come back from Beresford Road,” he said. “They told me you were out.” “They?” Hannah said anxiously. Mr. Blenkinsop smiled. “A loose expression! I only saw the servant. How did we miss ea...