They looked without eagerness, anticipating some familiar horror.
“Ooh!” echoed Millie, when she, too, had recognized the harbinger. But Mrs Gosling did not raise her eyes high enough.
“What?” she asked stupidly.
“There’s some one living in that cottage,” said Blanche, and pointed upwards to the soaring pennant.
Mrs Gosling’s face brightened. “Well, to be sure,” she said, “I wonder if they’d let me sit down and rest for a few minutes? And perhaps they might be willing to sell me a glass of milk. I’m sure I’d pay a good price for it.”
“We can see, anyway,” replied Millie, and they roused themselves and pushed on eagerly. The cottage was not more than thirty yards away.
Before they reached it, a woman came to the doorway, stared at them for a moment and then came down to the little wooden gate.
She was a thick-set woman of fifty or so, with iron grey hair cut close to her head. She wore a tweed skirt which did not reach the tops of her heavily soled, high boots. She looked capable, energetic and muscular. And in her hand she carried about three feet of stout broomstick.
She did not speak until the little procession halted before her gate, and then she pointed meaningly up the road with her broomstick and said: “Go on. You can’t stop here.” She spoke with the voice and inflection of an educated woman.
Blanche paused in the act of setting down the trolly handle. Mrs Gosling and Millie stared in amazement; they had been prepared to weep on the neck of this human friend, found at last in the awful desert of Middlesex.