Alice Ronder was over sixty and as active as a woman of forty. Ronder
looked at her and laughed.

"Never forgive you! What words! Do I ever cherish grievances? Never...
but I do like to be comfortable."

"Well, everything was all right a week ago. I've slaved at the place, as
you know, and Mrs. Clay's a jewel--but she complains of the Polchester
maids--says there isn't one that's any good. Oh, I want my tea, I want my
tea!"

They were climbing up from the market-place into the High Street. Ronder
looked about him with genial curiosity.

"Very nice," he said; "I believe I can be comfortable here."

"If you aren't comfortable you certainly won't stay," she answered him
sharply.

"Then I _must_ be comfortable," he replied, laughing.

He laughed a great deal, but absent-mindedly, as though his thoughts were
elsewhere. It would have been interesting to a student of human nature to
have been there and watched him as he sat back in the cab, looking through
the window, indeed, but seeing apparently nothing. He seemed to be gazing
through his round spectacles very short-sightedly, his eyes screwed up and
dim. His fat soft hands were planted solidly on his thick knees.

The observer would have been interested because he would soon have
realised that Render saw everything; nothing, however insignificant,