little consolation
in the new ham-and-beef shop on Botany Road; and then, little by
little, she had become attached to the neighbourhood. She had been
surprised to find that entertainment came to her door unsought, in the
form of constant arrivals and departures among the neighbours. And
each of them was the beginning or the end of a mystery, which she
probed to the bottom with the aid of the postman, the baker, the
butcher, and the tradesmen who were left lamenting with their bills
unpaid. Never before in her wanderings had she got so completely in
touch with her surroundings.

But from habit she always talked of moving. She could never pass an
empty house without going through it, sniffing the drains, and
requesting the landlord to make certain improvements, with the mania of
women who haunt the shops with empty purses, pricing expensive
materials. Every week she announced to Chook and Pinkey that she had
found the very house, if William would take a day off to move. But in
her heart she had no desire to leave the neighbourhood. It was an
agreeable and daily diversion for her to run up to the shop, and
prophesy ruin and disaster to Chook and Pinkey for taking a shop that
had beggared the last tenant, ignoring the fact that Jack Ryan had
converted his profits into beer. Chook's rough tongue made her wince at
times, but she refused to take offence for more than a day. She had
taken a fancy to Chook the moment she had set eyes on him, and was sure
Pinkey was responsible for his sudden bursts of temper. She thought to
do him a service by dwelling on Pinkey's weak points, and Chook showed
his gratitude by scowling. Pinkey, who had been a machinist in the
factory, was no hand with a needle, and Mrs Partridge commented on this
in Chook's hearing.

"An' fancy 'er 'ardly able to sew on a button, which is very dangerous
lyin' about on the floor, as children will eat anythin', not knowin'
the consequences," she cried.

Chook pointed out that there were no children in the house to eat stray
buttons.

"An' thankful you ought to be for that," she cried. "There's Mrs
Brown's baby expectin' to be waited on 'and an' foot, an' thinks
nothin' of wakin' 'er up in the night, cryin' its heart out one minute,
an' cooin' like a dove the next, though I don't 'old with keepin' birds
in the 'ouse as makes an awful mess, an' always the fear of a nasty nip
through the bars of the cage, which means a piece of rag tied round
your