"It's only one or two who have nowhere else to go." Joan laughed.

She thought she would be a fit candidate.
"You see, it makes company for me," explained Mary.
Mary lived in a tiny house behind a strip of garden.

It stood in a narrow side street between two public-houses, and was covered with ivy.
It had two windows above and a window and a door below.

The upstairs rooms belonged to the churchwardens and were used as a storehouse for old parish registers, deemed of little value.

Mary Stopperton and her bedridden husband lived in the two rooms below.