76 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

Hanover Street, and faded out of my knowledge,
though occasionally the old voice came to me in-
sinuatingly across the Corner House tables. "Like a
pig in a poke. That's what I enjoy. Never know what
you are going to get." "And if they were not quite
up to mark?" "I take what comes," the voice would
say, "I always accept 'em."

"Having to construct something upon which to
rejoice."

Miss Kilvane lived in the Cotswolds in a strange
high house like a Noah's ark with a monkey-puzzle
tree and a step-ladder of terraces. The rooms were
all tiny and of the same shape, like the rows of rooms
in an advertising exhibition or in the brothel quarter
of an eastern city. The rooms were packed with china
ornaments, like Staffordshire and Woolworth pieces
and Goss presents from Bournemouth. She was a
follower of the Regency prophetess, Joanna South-
cott, had a manuscript collection of her" prophecies,
two counterpanes the prophetess had made, seals and
locks of hair and a Communion glass engraved with
little ludicrous symbolical figures. She was old and
innocent and terribly sure of herself; she took down
Joanna's life from the ghost's lips. At tea a mouse ran
backwards and forwards in a cupboard behind Miss
Kilvane's back; I could see it moving through a crack,
between the tins of rather dry biscuits. The old lady,
with clear pale-blue eyes, wore an old-fashioned dress
of feded mauve and horn-rimmed glasses; in th£
dra-mng-room there was a portrait of Joanna, china
ornaments, antimacassars on horsehair chairs, a wire-
less set and a Radio Times. She spoke with complete
confidence of the Tmllenn.foni wtdch would come in