n her life closed her mouth.

Miss Fowler, in moments of irritation, had called Mary deadly
methodical. She put on her oldest waterproof and gardening-hat and her
ever-slipping goloshes, for the weather was on the edge of more rain.
She gathered fire-lighters from the kitchen, a half-scuttle of coals,
and a faggot of brushwood. These she wheeled in the barrow down the
mossed paths to the dank little laurel shrubbery where the destructor
stood under the drip of three oaks. She climbed the wire fence into the
Rector's glebe just behind, and from his tenant's rick pulled two large
armfuls of good hay, which she spread neatly on the fire-bars. Next,
journey by journey, passing Miss Fowler's white face at the morning-room
window each time, she brought down in the towel-covered clothes-basket,
on the wheel-barrow, thumbed and used Hentys, Marryats, Levers,
Stevensons, Baroness Orczys, Garvices, schoolbooks, and atlases,
unrelated piles of the _Motor Cyclist_, the _Light Car_, and catalogues
of Olympia Exhibitions; the remnants of a fleet of sailing-ships from
ninepenny cutters to a three-guinea yacht; a prep.-school dressing-gown;
bats from three-and-sixpence to twenty-four shillings; cricket and
tennis balls; disintegrated steam and clockwork locomotives with their
twisted rails; a grey and red tin model of a submarine; a dumb
gramophone and cracked records; golf-clubs that had to be broken across
the knee, like his walking-sticks, and an assegai; photographs of
private and public school cricket and football elevens, and his O.T.C.
on the line of march; kodaks, and film-rolls; some pewters, and one real
silver cup, for boxing competitions and Junior Hurdles; sheaves of
school photographs; Miss Fowler's photograph; her own which he had borne
off in fun and (good care she took not to ask!) had never returned; a
playbox with a secret drawer; a load of flannels, belts, and jerseys,
and a pair of spiked shoes unearthed in the attic; a packet of all the
letters that Miss Fowler and she had ever written to him, kept for some
absurd reason through all these years; a five-day attempt at a diary;
framed pictures of racing motors in full Brooklands career, and load
upon load of undistinguishable wreckage of tool-boxes, rabbit-hutches,
electric batteries, tin soldiers, fret-saw outfits, and jig-saw puzzles.

Miss Fowler at the window watched her come and go, and said to herself,
'Mary's an old woman. I never realised it before.'

Afte