"

"Dear me, now! Was it so thick as all that? . . . You know, I can't
see the bridge from my back window--only a bit of the Old Doctor's
house past the corner of Climoe's: and I shan't see the bridge even
when the old house comes down. But I called in builder Gilbert last
Monday on pretence that the back launder wanted repairing; and when
he'd examined it and found it all right, I asked him how pulling down
that house would affect the view: and he said that in his opinion it
would open up a bit of the street just in front of the Bank, so that
I shall be able to see all the customers going in and out."

This was news to Mrs Polsue, and it did not please her at all.
Her own bow-window enfiladed the Bank entrance (as well as that of
the Three Pilchards by the Quay-head), and so gave her a marked
advantage over her friend. To speak in military phrase, her
conjectures upon other folks' business were fed by a double line of
communication.

"Well, my dear, you won't pry on _me_ going in and out there," she
answered tartly, with a sniff. "Whenever I wish to withdraw some of
my balance, to invest it, I send for Mr Pamphlett, and he calls on me
and advises--I am bound to say--always most politely."

But here Miss Oliver put in her shot. (And Mrs Polsue indeed should
have been warier: for the pair were tried combatants. But a tendency
to lose her temper, and, losing it, to speak in haste, was ever her
fatal weakness.)

"Why; of course, . . . and _that_ accounts for it," Miss Oliver
murmured.

"Accounts for what?"

"Oh, nothing. . . . There was a visitor here last summer--I forget
her name, but she used to go about making water-colours in a mushroom
hat you might have bought for sixpence--quite a simple good creature:
and one day, drinking tea at the Minister's, she raised quite a laugh
by being so much concerned over your health. She said she'd seen the
doctor calling at your house almost every day with a little black
bag, and made sure there must have been an operation. She mistook Mr
Pamphlett for the doctor, if you ever heard tell of such
simple-mindedness."

"WHAT?"

"And the awkward part of it was," Miss Oliver continued in a musing
voice, searching her memory--"the awkward part was, poor Mrs
Pamphlett's being present."

"And you never told me, Cherry Oliver, until this moment!" exclaimed
the widow.

"One doesn't go about repeating every little trifle. . . . And, for
that matter, Mrs Pamphlett was