Mrs Polsue
darkly. Like some other folks in this world, she produced much of
her total effect by suggesting that she had access to sources of
information sealed to the run of mankind. She ever managed to convey
the suggestion by phrases--and, still more cleverly, by silences--
which left the evidence conveniently vague. To be sure, a
great-uncle of hers had commanded in his time a Post-Office Packet
plying between Falmouth and Surinam, and few secrets of the
Government had been withheld from him: but he was now, as Mrs Polsue
had to confess, "no more," and when you came to reflect on it (as you
sometimes did after taking leave of her), the sort of knowledge she
had been intimating could hardly have been telegraphed from another
and better world. She had also a cousin in London, "in a large way
of drapery business," who communicated to her--or was supposed to
communicate--"what was wearing": an advantage which she used,
however, less to refresh her own toilettes than to discourage her
neighbours'. Moreover, there was a brother-in-law somewhere "in the
Civil Service," to whom she made frequent allusion. But the
knowledge she derived from him concerning State secrets or high
politics could, at the best, but be far from recent, because as a
fact the pair had not been on terms of intercourse by speech or
letter since her husband's decease twelve years ago. (There had been
some unpleasantness over the Will.)

"I have been expecting it for a long while," asseverated Mrs Polsue.
"Gracious! Why?"

"You are panting. You are short of breath. You should be more
careful of yourself than to come hurrying down the hill at such a
rate, at your time of life," said Mrs Polsue. "It reddens the face,
too: which is a consideration if you insist on wearing that bit of
crimson in your hat. The two shades don't go together."

"It is not crimson. It is cherry," said Miss Oliver.

"Which, dear?"

"The ribbon, Mary-Martha. You should wear glasses. . . . But I
started late," Miss Oliver confessed. "I didn't like to show myself
walking to Chapel, and so many of the men-folk passing in the
opposite direction. It seemed so _marked_." She might have
confessed further (but did not) that she had waited, peeping over her
blind, to see the brakes go by. "But _you_ were late too," she
added.

"If you will use your reason, Cherry Oliver, it might tell you that I
couldn't get past the crowd on the bridge, and was _forced_ to wait.