Mrs. Andrews was an even greater talker; but, although most people objected to her visits on principle, they did not glance at the clock every two minutes while she was there or invent errands for themselves in order to get rid of her. Like Mrs. Mullins, she had got her family off hand and so had unlimited leisure; but, unlike her, she had always something of interest to relate. If nothing had happened in the hamlet since her last call, she was quite capable of inventing something. More often, she would take up some stray, unimportant fact, blow it up like a balloon, tie it neatly with circumstantial detail and present it to her listener, ready to be launched on the air of the hamlet. She would watch the clothesline of some expectant mother, and if no small garments appeared on it in what she considered due time, it would be: “There’s that Mrs. Wren, only a month from her time, and not a stitch put into a rag yet.” If she saw a well-dressed stranger call at one of the cottages, she would know for a fac’ that he was the bailiff with a County Court summons, or that he had been to tell the parents that “their young Jim,” who was working up-country, had got into trouble with the police over some money. She sized up every girl at home on holiday and thought that most of them looked pregnant. She took care to say thought and looked in those cases, because she knew that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred time would prove her suspicions to have been groundless.

Sometimes she would widen her field and tell of the doings in high society. She knew for a fac’ that the then Prince of Wales had given one of his ladies a necklace with pearls the size of pigeon’s eggs, and that the poor old Queen, with her crown on her head and tears streaming down her cheeks, had gone down on her knees to beg him to turn the whole lot of saucy hussies out of Windsor Castle. It was said in the hamlet that, when Mrs. Andrews spoke, you could see the lies coming out of her mouth like steam, and nobody believed a word she said, even when, occasionally, she spoke the truth. Yet most of the women enjoyed a chat with her. As they said, it made a bit of a change. Laura’s mother was too hard on her when she called her a pest, or interrupted one of her stories at a crucial point to ask, “Are you sure that is right, Mrs. Andrews?” In a community without cinemas or wireless and with very little reading matter, she had her uses.