Brown on Resolution by C.S. Forester — Read

So that at midsummer, 1893, a pleasant-faced widow, Mrs. Agatha Brown, attired in all the hideous panoply of mourning for a newly-dead husband which the Queen's example had made nearly compulsory, came to live in lodgings at Peckham. Her sympathetic landlady soon knew all about her -- about the husband, rather a bad lot, seemingly, who had been in the greengrocery trade and had died suddenly of some rather vague disease, but leaving his widow well provided for by the standards of that simple place and time; about the happy event which was to be expected shortly; about her general friendlessness and the dislike with which her late husband's family regarded her for intercepting the legacies they had come to look upon as their due. Mrs. Rodgers became a great admirer of Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown was so evidently a lady, yet withal she had so sound a knowledge of practical affairs, and, most important, she had round her that tremendous aura of "independent means" which implies so much to a working-class dependent for its daily bread upon the whim of an employer. Mrs. Brown paid splendidly regular money for her furnished rooms, but she paid only a tiny amount more than the lowest market value, so that contempt could not creep in to adulterate Mrs. Rodgers's admiration. Mrs. Brown knew all about the prices of things and how long they ought to last, and she always knew how much of her little joints and of her butter and tea and other supplies she had left, so that Mrs. Rodgers's first tentative stealings were calmly checked, and she bore no ill will -- quite the contrary. She was soon a very subservient ally.

Mr. Deane, too, who had drawn up that astonishing will of Agatha's mother which had enabled Agatha to become Mrs. Brown of Peckham, was very helpful and kind. He shook his head sympathetically when Agatha, calling upon him, told him about family trouble which had led her to leave home, and of course, seeing that such was his business, he readily consented to take upon himself the management of Agatha's "estate" -- the six houses of Beaconsfield Terrace. He looked up curiously and sharply when Agatha explained that at her new address she was known as Mrs. Brown, and when he noticed the expression on her face he pulled his white whiskers and looked down at his notes again in embarrassed fashion. After all, he was a solicitor, and solicitors should not be shocked at encountering family skeletons.