pression, and would smile when a cloud
would lay down on the village, or when the rain sighed louder than usual
against her solid shelter. Ink, paperclips, and foolscap paper were
on the table before her, and she could also reach an umbrella, a
waterproof, a walking-stick, and an electric bell. Her age was between
elderly and old, and her forehead was wrinkled with an expression of
slight but perpetual pain. But the lines round her mouth indicated that
she had laughed a great deal during her life, just as the clean tight
skin round her eyes perhaps indicated that she had not often cried. She
was dressed in brown silk. A brown silk shawl lay most becomingly over
her beautiful hair.

After long thought she wrote on the paper in front of her, "The subject
of this memoir first saw the light at Wolverhampton on May the 14th,
1842." She laid down her pen and said "Ugh!" A robin hopped in and she
welcomed him. A sparrow followed and she stamped her foot. She watched
some thick white water which was sliding like a snake down the gutter
of the gravel path. It had just appeared. It must have escaped from a
hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The
lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and
wherefore, and the ways of the earth ("our dull stepmother") bored her
unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and
she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, "The
subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night.
It was twenty to eleven. His pa was a parson, but he was not his pa's
son, and never went to heaven." There was the sound of a train, and
presently white smoke appeared, rising laboriously through the heavy
air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat
perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper
aside, took afresh piece, and was beginning to write, "On May the 14th,
1842," when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said,
"I am sorry for Flea Thompson."

"I daresay I am sorry for him too," said the lady; her voice was languid
and pleasant. "Who is he?"

"Flea's a liar, and the next time we meet he'll be a football." Off
slipped a sodden ulster. He hung it up angrily upon a peg: the arbour
provided several.

"But who is he, and why has he that disastrous name?"

"Flea? Fleance. All the Thompsons are named out of Shakespeare. He
grazes the Rings."