CHAPTER V
HRISTMAS came and went unmerrily. The old woman who took care of me had known better days; she stayed in bed in an effort to forget. Next door, but one, a son had returned unexpectedly from the trenches. There were laughing, dancing and piano playing. I tried to share their happiness; but happiness isn't the same when it is borrowed second-hand. My rooms were cheerless and empty of all sound.
I kept thinking of my air-raid visitors, wondering where they were and hoping that the American officer had re-found the little lady. If he had, I felt sure he would be good to her. I told myself a foolish fairy-story, as old houses will, of how, when the war was ended, they would drive up to my door together, as if by accident, and exclaim, “Why, it's the little house where we first met!” Then the TO LET sign would be taken down and, having fetched Joan and Robbie, we would all live together forever. With luck and love we might have smaller feet to toddle up and down my stairs.
January, February, March commenced and ended, and the TO LET sign was still there. It seemed that nobody would ever want me. It was April now; to their nests in the railed-in garden of the square the last year's birds were coming back. Trees had become a mist of greenness. Tulips and daffodils were shining above the ground. In the window-boxes of other houses geraniums were making a scarlet flare. Without warning the dream, which had been no more than a dream, began to become a fact.
I had been drowsing in the sun, taking no notice of what was happening, when I was suddenly awakened by a sharp rat-a-tat-tat. I came to myself with a start to find that the little lady, unaccompanied, was standing on my steps.
She knocked again and then a third time. There could be no doubt about her determination to enter. At last the old woman heard her and dragged herself complainingly up from the basement. When the door had been narrowly opened, the little lady pushed it wider and stepped smartly into the hall with an exceedingly business-like air. “I have an order from the agents to view the house.”
“I'm 'ard of 'earing. Wot did yer say? Speak louder.”