When he got home Mrs.Marigold, as like as not, would give him plain slabs of bread buttered by her economical self.

I knew my Marigold.

He gave a vicious and ineffectual turn or two and then stuck his head in the bonnet.
The situation was saved by the appearance from the garden of Mrs.Boyce herself, a handsome, erect, elegantly dressed old lady in the late sixties, pink and white like a Dresden figure and in her usual condition of resplendent health.

She held out her hand.
"I couldn't let you go without telling you that Leonard is back.

I don't want the whole town to know.