Miss Malkin was a virgin of
fifty-eight years' standing, with definite and unchangeable ideas on
every subject on earth or in heaven except her own age. As Rachel,
followed by Louis Fores, crossed the shop, Miss Malkin looked at them
and closed her lips, and lowered her eyelids, and the upper part of
her body seemed to curve slightly, with the sinuosity of a serpent--a
strange, significant movement, sometimes ill described as "bridling."
The total effect was as though Miss Malkin had suddenly clicked the
shutters down on all the windows of her soul and was spying at Rachel
and Louis Fores through a tiny concealed orifice in the region of her
eye. It was nothing to Miss Malkin that Rachel on that night of all
nights had come in to buy Singapore Delicious Chunks at 8-1/2d. It
was nothing to her that Mrs. Maldon had had "an attack." Miss Malkin
merely saw Rachel and Fores gadding about the town together of a
Saturday night while Mrs. Maldon was ill in bed. And she regarded
Ted's benevolence as the benevolence of a simpleton. Between Miss
Malkin's taciturnity and the voice within her Rachel had a terrible
three minutes. She was "sneaped"; which fortunately made her red hair
angry, so that she could keep some of her dignity.
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