Mrs Custance and the hire-car man, between them, managed to drag the boxes inside. Mrs Custance suspected she had ricked something. And soon the little van had arrived, with the rest of Miss Docker’s oddments: the rocker, the chest, as well as a tallboy and half-a-dozen cane-bottomed chairs, which Mrs Custance had not bargained for.

‘I was never a nuisance to anyone,’ Miss Docker said, ‘but shall take what is offered, whether garage, or outhouse.’

‘Oh,’ replied Mrs Custance, hurt, ‘we had agreed on the little glassed-in room.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Docker, peeping inside, ‘if that was agreed. But these few poor sticks can stand somewhere outside. The rocker on the front veranda, of course, where we shall often sit and chat. But no one could object to the tallboy at least in my own room. There is not that much furniture. In fact, it is fairly bare. You men – won’t you? – will help move the tallboy in.’

When it had been squeezed through, and all the panting and sweating was over, Mrs Custance had to protest:

‘Oh, but Miss Docker, don’t you see, it will be standing in front of the louvres!’

‘You can’t have it all ways,’ Miss Docker replied, gloomily for her.

She gave the thing an extra shove, with the result that something splintered down.

‘What is that?’ Miss Docker asked.

‘That,’ Mrs Custance replied, who had fallen immediately on her knees, ‘is nothing. Nothing of importance. A little bookshelf.’

‘I am sorry,’ Miss Docker said, ‘but accidents will always happen.’

So Miss Docker had arrived.

She began to walk about soon. Mrs Custance could have sworn she heard comb-and-paper, but it was only the sound of Miss Docker humming. So she roamed, and the purple-brown strains of evening filled the house with steady treacle.

‘Wouldn’t you like to take off your things? I must get the tea,’ Mrs Custance called.

‘I am settling in,’ Miss Docker replied. ‘Everybody has their different methods. Nobody will tell you I am not cheerful. Normally. But there are the moments in life which are not normal. When you are dislocated, so to speak. Won’t you agree?’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Custance did, feebly.

She was attending to the macaroni cheese.

‘Macaroni cheese,’ Miss Docker observed.

She had come in. She was standing over.

‘Remind me,’ she said, ‘to tell you of a trick I learned with that.’

Mrs Custance promised she would.

‘And a nice piece of rump. Tender, I bet. Nice and thick.’

‘That is for my husband,’ Mrs Custance explained. ‘After a hard day’s work, I consider a man is in need of meat.’

‘I’ll say!’ Miss Docker said, and laughed.

Mrs Custance wondered.

‘Ah, the men!’ Miss Docker said. ‘One day I’m going to tell you all about the men in my life. There are some will not believe, but I am not forcing anybody to accept the truth. It is like religious faith. Take it or leave it, I say. Yes,’ she sighed, ‘the men! Now is that a hydrangea? That staggy, sickly thing over by your rotary clothes-line?’