It was one of the children’s treats to be invited into her house to see her stuffed owl and other treasures, which included some pressed flowers from the Holy Land in a frame made of olive wood from the Mount of Olives. Another treasure was a fan made of long white ostrich feathers which she would take out of its case and show them, then fan herself gently as she reclined on her couch with her feet up. “I’ve seen better times,” she would say in her more talkative moods. “Yes, I’ve seen better times, but I’ve never seen a better husband than Amos, and I like this little house where I can shut the door and do as I like. After all, a public’s never your own. Anybody who’s got two pennies to rub together can come in and out as they like, without so much as a knock at the door or a ‘by your leave’, and what’s grand furniture as isn’t your own, for you can’t call it that when other people have the use of it.” And she would curl up on her couch and shut her eyes, for, although she was never known to get tipsy at home, her breath sometimes had a queer, sweetish smell which an older person might have recognized as that of gin. “Now, run along,” she would say, opening one eye; “and lock the door behind you and put the key on the window-sill. I don’t want any more visitors and I’m not going out. This isn’t one of my visiting days.”

Then there was a young married woman named Gertie who passed as a beauty, entirely on the strength of a tiny waist and a simpering smile. She was a great reader of novelettes and had romantic ideas. Before her marriage she had been a housemaid at one of the country mansions where men-servants were kept, and their company and compliments had spoiled her for her kind, honest great cart-horse of a husband. She loved to talk about her conquests, telling of the time Mr. Pratt, the butler, had danced with her four times at the servants’ ball, and how jealous her John had been. He had been invited for her sake, but could not dance, and had sat there all the evening, like a great gowk, in his light-grey Sunday suit, with his great red hands hanging down between his knees, and a chrysanthemum in his buttonhole as big as a pancake.