Some ten minutes after the brakes had departed, Mrs Polsue and Miss
Oliver, bound for divine service, encountered at the corner where
Jolly Hill unites with Bridge Street, and continued their way
together up the Valley road.

"Good-morning! This is terrible news," said Miss Oliver, panting a
little, for she had tripped down the hill in a great hurry.

"I have been expecting it for a long while," responded Mrs Polsue
darkly. Like some other folks in this world, she produced much of
her total effect by suggesting that she had access to sources of
information sealed to the run of mankind. She ever managed to convey
the suggestion by phrases--and, still more cleverly, by silences--
which left the evidence conveniently vague. To be sure, a
great-uncle of hers had commanded in his time a Post-Office Packet
plying between Falmouth and Surinam, and few secrets of the
Government had been withheld from him: but he was now, as Mrs Polsue
had to confess, "no more," and when you came to reflect on it (as you
sometimes did after taking leave of her), the sort of knowledge she
had been intimating could hardly have been telegraphed from another
and better world. She had also a cousin in London, "in a large way
of drapery business," who communicated to her--or was supposed to
communicate--"what was wearing": an advantage which she used,
however, less to refresh her own toilettes than to discourage her
neighbours'. Moreover, there was a brother-in-law somewhere "in the
Civil Service," to whom she made frequent allusion. But the
knowledge she derived from him concerning State secrets or high
politics could, at the best, but be far from recent, because as a