CHAPTER 23Making the beds with Miss Cunningham, Mrs. Hubbard was perfectly well aware that she was not in her usual. Under an appearance of great neatness and restraint she herself was one of the most inquisitive women in Hazel Green. She had a nose for a secret comparable only to that of a ferret on the trail, but all very quietly, very decorously, and the prize when attained to be shared only with the chosen few and under pledge of secrecy. When Miss Cunningham took the side of the bed which enabled her to keep her back to the windows, she was at once aware that this had been done in order to conceal the fact that she had been crying and that she had passed a wakeful night.
When brushing down the stairs she did not fail to observe a slight flattening at the edges of two of the balusters
