"Be a safety valve to me! Oh, Monnie, what should I do without you! You are so safe, so silent, so busy in your world of work, that all my confidences will be safe. I have come over with the overwhelming desire in my heart to pick our new neighbour to pieces. Isn't it truly dreadful of me? Have you seen her yet?"
"Her name is Mrs. Norman, is it not? She is taking milk from us. No, I have not met her."
"You would like her at first sight, as I did. She's a jolly cheery-looking little woman; but, oh, Monnie, I wish with all my heart she had never come near us."
Monica sat down.
"Tell me all about her. Get it off your chest, and you will feel better."
"It's ridiculous of me, but I have an instinctive feeling that she is going to bring havoc into our quiet life. I suppose she is what you call a man's woman; but she is awfully sweet—too sweet to me—only, as a rule, her conversation is directed wholly to Uncle Ted and father. And she makes me feel out of it. I can't explain. I'm not jealous, and I've never been made to feel so in my own home before. She's a great talker, and an amusing one; and she's the kind of person that absorbs all the conversation, and centres it round herself. I've tried awfully hard to like her, but I haven't succeeded; and there are things I have hated in connection with her. She has always given us to understand that she was a lonely widow, with no one belonging to her. Yesterday, quite accidentally, I found out that she has a grown-up daughter who lives with her father's relations. She seems quite indifferent in her feelings towards her.
"Then she posed to father as a great reader, and Uncle Ted was full of her wonderful library. Now we find out the books were her husband's, and she keeps them with the intention of selling them when she has a good offer for them. She hasn't read one of them; she confessed as much to me in an unguarded moment.
"She orders Uncle Ted about as if he were a boy; he is doing all kinds of things for her in her cottage, and he spends his days down there. Of course, I am delighted that he should have the interest and occupation of it; but one day when I was out, she left him down there and marched up to spend the afternoon with dad. She was full of garden questions. When I came back, she was pouring out tea for dad, as if she had known him all her life. Dad was bored to death with her—only he's too polite to say so. He doesn't like her, I can see. Then Uncle Ted came to dinner in the sulkiest of tempers; he had been furious at her leaving him and attaching herself to father. It sounds very silly and foolish, doesn't it? I wish Mrs. de Cressiers were back."
"It sounds as if she were of the adventuress style," said Monica laughing.
"Doesn't it? And yet she isn't; for everything is quite straight and above board, except perhaps about her daughter. Mrs. de Cressiers knows her history. Well, let me continue. Two days ago Austin called on her, and now she has him completely in tow. He is superintending her garden; Uncle Ted is making shelves, and dressers, and tables for her. Isn't she clever? And am I not a backbiter?"