But every evening, towards bedtime, she came into the garden to catch
Mimi. Through the window Harriett could hear her calling: "Mimi! Mimi!"
She could see her in her white frock, moving about, hovering, ready to
pounce as Mimi dashed from the bushes. She thought: "She walks into my
garden as if it was her own. But she won't make a friend of me. She's
young, and I'm old."

She had a piece of wire netting put up along the wall to keep Mimi out.

"That's the end of it," she said. She could never think of the young girl
without a pang of sadness and resentment.


Fifty-five. Sixty.

In her sixty-second year Harriett had her first bad illness.

It was so like Sarah Barmby. Sarah got influenza and regarded it as a
common cold and gave it to Harriett who regarded it as a common cold and
got pleurisy.

When the pain was over she enjoyed her illness, the peace and rest of
lying there, supported by the bed, holding out her lean arms to be washed
by Maggie; closing her eyes in bliss while Maggie combed and brushed and
plaited her fine gray hair. She liked having the same food at the same
hours. She would look up, smiling weakly, when Maggie came at bedtime with
the little tray. "What have you brought me _now_, Maggie?"

"Benger's Food, ma'am."