Miss Mole by E.H. Young — Read

Mrs. Spenser-Smith's party was usually on the twenty-seventh of December, a date on which no hopeful member of the chapel would have made any other engagement until the chance of an invitation had gone past. On Boxing Day, there was an entertainment at the Mission, demanding the attendance of the whole family and Doris, and Hannah was left alone in the house. Later, she was to look back at that solitary evening as at an oasis where she had rested between two stages of a journey and, as though she knew the one in front of her was the harder, she made the most of the interlude, sitting by the fire and reading one of the books which Mr. Blenkinsop had, most unexpectedly, sent her.

Uncle Jim and Howard had been for a long walk in the country and she supposed Howard's affairs had been discussed and they had arranged their plan of action. She could do nothing more in that business, but she had determined to try a new method with Robert Corder, to present herself to him as the person who understood, and so to take the burden of his indignation from those who were less able to bear it.