Free The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbons

possible. If he were at all presentable, she would cultivate him.
    However, the few remaining weeks before Christmas passed so busily and quickly that she almost forgot Mr. Waite and his books; she put the latter into a cupboard to get them out of the way and never even opened one of them, for she spent every evening after the children were in bed making toys and paper decorations. Her family had a tradition of splendid old-fashioned Christmases, which she had determined to carry on with her own children, and she was also anxious that Jenny, Louise and Meg should harvest a few rich memories, at least, from these restless, homeless years. Therefore she fashioned silver stars from the tops of milk bottles and dolls’ clothes from scraps of old silk and miniature furniture from cotton reels, and saved sugar and points to expend upon the Christmas dinner—at which there was now a faint hope, though only a faint one, that Ronald might be present.
    Sometimes from her window she saw that hooded figure which was vaguely reminiscent of the Ku-Klux-Klan, moving among the coops on rainy mornings, and wearing an equally concealing hat drawn down over his eyes on finer ones. There was something dreary about the sight, and she felt disinclined, when she did remember him, to make Mr. Waite’s acquaintance. She disliked the company of depressed, complaining people so much that she would put up with more than most women if only the offender were cheerful, and she sometimes showed strong impatience with the doleful whining fits that overtook Louise.
    Jenny was growing to be a companion to her mother, for she was in some ways older than her age, and could reply to Alda’s remarks with something more than childish chatter. She was intelligent, and had a robust humour of her own, but whether she was also clever, or sociable, or ambitious, or possessed a bump of veneration, her mother was not in a position to know. These are qualities which require the presence of other children to draw them forth, and Jenny saw no children but her sisters. In education she was backward even for a child whose schooling had been interrupted, reading with difficulty those childish books which she preferred, but Louise quickly discovered the tattered, grubby hoard concealed in the cupboard and had read every book at Pine Cottage within the first week. Alda, whose own judgment of books had been formed by twelve years of marriage to a clever man, dismissed Pat Takes a Hand and Mystery at Red House as “not books at all,” but Louise, with the aid of that Philosopher’s Stone, a child’s imagination, extracted golden pleasure from the shoddiest story. As for Meg, she had only just been introduced to the Flopsy Bunnies (to whom we recently saw a reference in The Condemned Playground which convinced us that Mr. Connolly would see eye to eye with Mr. McGregor).
    Every morning the children went down to the farm to fetch the letters. Sometimes they came back rejoicing, when Mr. Hoadley had already bicycled into Burlham for them; sometimes the comely, cross girl who brought them in on her bread-van every other day was late, and they returned empty-handed. The letters were then brought up in the middle of the morning by one of the Italians.
    There was some confusion in the family over the Italians, for to Jenny, Louise and Meg, Emilio, with his teasing and his gifts of tiny baskets deftly woven from straw, was “the nice one,” while Fabrio, who seldom spoke, and handed in the letters with a brief smile or none at all, was “the nasty one.” Alda, however, while pitying both young men, preferred Fabrio’s reserve to his friend’s over-bold stares.
    At the children’s request, she asked Mr. Hoadley if they might give the prisoners some cigarettes and, permission having been somewhat unwillingly given, a shopping expedition was made into Sillingham.
    At Bettany’s, the biggest grocery shop in the High Street, two of the four young ladies employed were married to