‘George, he says to me: “Now, Florrie, you mind you bring Eliza hack with you.” But, of course, any one could see with half a glance that that’s impossible like you are. We could have made you that comfortable, too! We ’ave a lovely little ’ouse. What with the money George is picking up, and what we’ve saved.’
By the time of the evening train on which her sister had promised to return to North Bromwich, Mrs Moseley was heartily sick of George’s name and achievements. She hadn’t really ever known her sister Florrie, and now she felt that in spite of her suave manner and affectation of kindnesses that cost nothing she had really come to spy out the nakedness of the land, to check the value of her sister’s scanty effects, to reckon just how much lay between her and the workhouse. And all the time Mrs Moseley was in a fever wondering what the house was like downstairs; whether, in her absence, dirt had accumulated; whether Tiger had made the washhouse in a mess. Indeed, when Mrs Wade departed, she crept downstairs to see for herself. ‘Whatever they says’—this was always her cry—‘they can’t say I bain’t clean!’
The upshot of this visit was revealed to Abner a week or two later, when he arrived one evening to find the faithless Tiger playing at the knee of a stranger, a girl with the city’s matte complexion, hair that was almost black with a gleam of copper in it, and brown, long-lashed eyes.
‘That your dog?’ she said, smiling. Her voice was low. Abner was now used to the high-pitched voices of Alice and her neighbours. He had never heard a woman speak so quietly.
He said ‘Yes,’ and she, with the utmost self-possession, told him that Tiger was a beauty. It wasn’t strictly true, but it gave Abner a flush of pleasure, for he loved Tiger. Then she said: ‘I’m Susan Wade. Mother sent me here to look after Auntie Liza for a week or two.’
As a matter of fact mother, warned by a snuffy shilling-doctor in Lower Sparkdale that Susan was anæmic and needed country air, had suddenly felt more than usually generous toward her sister, and sent Susan to ‘help,’ with no more than the price of her keep.
‘Afford it?’ she said, when her husband questioned her about Mrs Moseley’s ability to feed another mouth, ‘Afford it? You don’t know our Liza! She was always the quiet one of the family. And a saving kind, too. I know well enough she’s got a stocking somewhere!’
Mr Wade was not in the habit of arguing with his wife, and Mrs Moseley, when Susan arrived at Halesby with a small wicker basket containing her best dress and a bag of apples with mother’s love, was so deeply touched that when she kissed her her eyes filled with tears.
‘You’ll be lonely,’ she said, ‘with an old woman like me.’
‘I shall go out into the lanes,’ said Susan. ‘Mother told me I must get all the fresh air I can. For the blood, you know.’ That put the matter quite plainly.