Payment Deferred by C.S. Forester — Read

Next week kept all Malcolm Road on tiptoe. Various rumours had been flying round about Mr. Marble's suddenly acquired wealth, stating its amount and its manner of coming in twenty different ways. Yet there were still some sceptics, who refused to believe the evidence presented to them, and who scornfully declared that they would give credit to the rumours only when they were proved beyond all doubt. Why, only a few months back there had been similar rumours, when the Marbles started to pay off their bills and Mrs. Marble had bought some new clothes. But in a short time they had been back to their old tricks again, owing money on all sides, while Mrs. Marble had been going about as dowdy as any of them.

But this time the sceptics were confounded. At first the news had flown from lip to lip -- "Number 53's moving out. " It looked like it, indeed. An empty furniture van stood outside, and men were moving furniture into it from Number 53. Everywhere, from upper windows behind curtains, housewives were watching the process. Some, overwhelmed with curiosity, put on their hats and went thither on hurriedly-composed errands of borrowing or restoring in order to have a word with Mrs. Marble to find out what was really going on. But they retired baffled. Mrs. Marble was in too great a state of hurry and bewilderment to give them any satisfaction at all. And, having retired, they were doomed to further mystification. For more vans drew up outside Number 53, and from these men began to bring other furniture and take it inside.