I apologized profusely, telling her that I must have left one of my gloves by my chair. Trusting soul that she was, she held the door wide and said, “I don’t remember seeing anything on the floor, but then my eyes aren’t what they once were. Do come in and look, my dear.” I crossed the room to where I’d been sitting and said, “Oh, here it is.” And I held up the glove I had just taken out of my pocket. Miss Gooding squinted. “So it is. Well, I hope you hadn’t got too far before you remembered it.” As I walked to the door again, I said, “Do you have visitors very often, Miss Gooding?” “The rector calls when he can. And the former sexton comes to bring me the gossip. There was a young man not three weeks gone who had lost his way. I was just going to fetch more coal and he offered to do it for me. Very kind of him, wasn’t it? But he said it was the least he could do after disturbing me.”
