Mrs Mallison possessed an insatiable curiosity. Its area, it is true, covered but a few square miles of country, for everything that happened outside Chumley was powerless to stir her to interest. Kingdoms might rise, kingdoms might fall, science might evolve the most marvellous of inventions, beneath a cataclysm of nature, whole provinces might be wrecked--Mrs Mallison listened to the announcement as she sipped her morning coffee, and murmured an automatic: "Dear! Dear! Tut! Tut!" the while she continued to ponder why Mrs Gainsby was hurrying to the early train wearing her best hat! Nothing that affected her neighbours was too trifling to engage her attention, and her mind, empty of so much, was a veritable storehouse for inconvenient numbers and dates. When the doctor's chimney went on fire, she was able to declare that to her certain knowledge the sweep had not been on duty in that house since the third of March, the day of the blizzard, when Mrs Jones wanted him at the same time, because the weight of snow made her soot fall. The doctor's wife had plainly been guilty of the folly of trying to save two-and-six. She knew to an hour the age of every one of the younger generations, and laboriously corrected lapses of memory on the part of relations or parents. It was impossible for one of her acquaintances to resurrect so much as a buckle without her instant and cordial recognition. "And the paste buckle that you had on your purple silk all those years ago--how well it comes in! `Keep a thing a dozen years, and it comes into fashion again,' as my old mother used to say." She remembered the Vicar's sermons when he preached them after a lapse of years, and the good man chid himself because the fact brought annoyance, rather than gratification. Not for the world would he have put it into words, but deep in his heart lay the thought that it was useless to remember precepts, which were not put into practice. Within her own home Mrs Mallison's curiosity reached its acutest pitch, so that it became sheer torture to her to be shut out from even the smallest happening. To overhear tags of conversation was insufferable, unless she were instantly supplied with the context. Thus to come into a room and hear a daughter say, "I always thought so," was to know no peace until she had been enlightened as to the context of the statement. "What have you always thought, Teresa? Teresa, _what_ do you always think?" "Nothing, mother." "My dear! Nonsense. I heard you. As I opened the door I distinctly heard you say so. What were you talking about?" "Nothing, mother. Nothing worth repeating, at any rate. You wouldn't be interested." "My dear, I am always interested. How could I not be interested in my children's thoughts? Wait till you are a mother yourself... You can't possibly have forgotten in this short time. What do you always think?" Then Teresa would set her lips and look obstinate, and Mary would come to the rescue.