"I gave it up and sold the furniture, all but one or two bits I kept by me—Dave Wardle's desk, and the arm-chair. I went to a lodging at Sidcup—a pretty place with honeysuckles round my window. I lived there a many years, and had friends. Then the railway came, and they pulled the cottage down—Mrs. Hutchinson's. And all the folk I knew were driven away—went to America, many of them; all the Hutchinsons went. I remember that time well. But oh dear—the many moves I had after that! I cannot tell them all one from another...."
"It tires you to talk. Never mind now. Tell me another time."
"No—I'm not tired. I can talk. Where was I? Oh—the lodgings! I moved many times—the last time to Sapps Court, not so very long ago. I made friends with Mrs. Burr at Skillicks, as I told you."
"And that is what made you so poor?"
"Yes. I have only a few hundred pounds of my own, an annuity—it comes to sixty pounds a year. I have learned how to make it quite enough for me." Nevertheless, thought Gwen to herself, the good living in her temporary home in Cavendish Square had begun to tell favourably. Enough is seldom as good as a feast on sixty pounds a year. The old lady seemed, however, to dismiss the subject, going on with something antecedent to it:—"You see now, my dear, why I said 'I hope.' What could the unhappy boy be to me, or I to him? But I shall never know where he died, nor when."
Gwen tried to get at more about her past; but, at some point antecedent to this parting from her son, she seemed to become more reserved, or possibly she had overtasked her strength by so much talk. Gwen noticed that, in all she had told her, she had not mentioned a single name of a person. Some slight reference to Australia, which she had hoped would lead naturally to more disclosure, seemed rather, on second thoughts, to furnish a landmark or limit, with the inscription: "Thus far and no farther." You—whoever you are, reading this—may wonder why Gwen, who had so lately heard of Australia, and Mrs. Marrable's sister who went there over half-a-century ago, did not forthwith put two and two together, and speculate towards discovery of the truth. It may be strange to you to be told that she was reminded of old Mrs. Marrable's utterance of the word "Australia" when old Mrs. Prichard spoke it, and simply let the recollection drop idly, because it was so unlikely the two two's would add up. To be sure, she had quite forgotten, at the moment, what the old Granny at Chorlton had said about the Antipodes. It is only in books that people remember all through, quite to the end.
Bear this in mind, that this sisterhood of Maisie and Phoebe was entrenched in its own improbability, and that one antecedent belief of another mind at least would have been needed to establish it. A hint, a suggestion, might have capitalised a dozen claims to having said so all along. But all was primeval silence. There was not a murmur in Space to connect the two.
Mr. Bartlett, the builder, after inspecting the collapse of the wall, lost no time in drawing up a contract to reinstate same and make good roof, replacing all defective work with new where necessary; only in his haste to come to his impressive climax—"the work to be done to the satisfaction of yourself or your Surveyor for the sum of £99.8.4 (ninety-nine pounds eight shillings and fourpence),"—he spelt this last word nesseracy. He called on the landlord, the gentleman of independent means at Brixton, with this document in his pocket and a strong conviction of his own honesty in his face, and pointed out that what he said all along had come to pass. As his position had been that unless the house was rebuilt—by him—at great expense, it was pretty sure to come tumbling down, as these here old houses mostly did, it was difficult for the gentleman of independent means to gainsay him, especially as the latter's wife became a convert to Mr. Bartlett on the spot. It was his responsible and practical manner that did it. She directed her husband—a feeble sample of the manhood of Brixton—not to set up his judgment against that of professional experience, but to affix his signature forthwith to the document made and provided. He said weakly:—"I suppose I must." The lady said:—"Oh dear, no!—he must do as he liked." He naturally surrendered at discretion, and an almost holy expression of contentment stole over Mr. Bartlett's countenance, superseding his complexion, which otherwise was apt to remain on the memory after its outlines were forgotten.
To return once more to the drying of the premises after their reconstruction. The accepted view seemed to be that as soon as Mr. Bartlett and his abettors cleared out and died away, the walls would begin to dry, and would make up for lost time. Everyone seemed inclined to palliate this backwardness in the walls, and to feel that they, themselves, had they been in a like position, could not have done much drying—with all them workmen in and out all day; just think!