Now that she was alone there, the house was too big for her and she was thinking of taking a lodger. Only of course she would have to be very particular about the sort of person she would take. A man was not to be thought of, and a female lodger must neither be so young as to have the slightest inclination towards flightiness, nor so aged as to be a possible liability in the way of attendance or nursing, a thing which Miss Pell was careful to explain you undertook for your own family— and she would be the last to shirk her duty to a relative— but she couldn’t, no she really couldn’t consider it in the case of a stranger. Doris’s room was therefore still unoccupied. The house was one of a row of cottages all joined together, so Miss Pell had no need to be nervous. If she were to knock upon the wall on the right as you looked to the front, old Mrs. Rennick would knock back and call out to know what she wanted. If she knocked on the left-hand wall, young Mrs.
