Mavis resisted an impulse to fly from the house.  The more she saw of Mrs Gowler (the woman wore a wedding ring), the less she liked her.  To begin with, her appearance had given Mavis much of a shock.  Her alert fancy had conjured up a vision of a kindly, motherly woman, with soft eyes and voice, whose mere presence would have spoken of the sympathy and tenderness for which the lonely heart of Mavis ached.  Nurse Gowler was short, fat, and puffy, with her head sunk right into her shoulders.  Her pasty face, with its tiny eyes, contained a mouth of which the upper lip was insufficient to cover her teeth when her jaws were closed; some of these teeth were missing, but whole ones and stumps alike were discoloured with decay.  It was her eyes which chiefly repelled Mavis:  pupil, iris, and the part surrounding this last, were all of the same colour, a hard, bilious-looking green.  Her face suggested to Mavis a flayed pig’s head, such as can be seen in pork butchers’ shops.  As if this were not enough to disgust Mavis, the woman’s manner soon lost the geniality with which she had greeted her; she stood still and impassively by Mavis, who could not help believing that Mrs Gowler was attentively studying her from her hat to her shoe leather.

Mavis began her story, to be interrupted by a repressed cry of pain proceeding from the partly open door on the right.  Mrs Gowler quickly closed it.

Mavis resumed her story.  When she got to the part where her supposed husband was in America, Mrs Gowler impatiently interrupted her by saying: 

“Where ’e’s making a ’ome for you.”

“How did you know?” asked the astonished Mavis.

“It’s always the way; we’ve lots of ’em like that here, occasionals and regulars.”

“Occasionals and regulars!”

“Lor’ bless you, some of ’em comes as punctual as the baked potato man in October.  When was you expectin’?”

“I’m not quite certain,” replied Mavis, at which Mrs Gowler plied her with a number of questions, leading the former to remark presently: 

“I guess you’re due next Friday two weeks.  To prevent accidents, you’d better come on the Wednesday night.  If you like to book a bed, I’ll see it’s kep’.”

“But what are your charges?”

“’Ow much can you afford?”

After discussion, it was arranged that, if Mavis decided to stay with Mrs Gowler for three weeks certain, she was to pay twenty-two shillings a week, this sum to include the woman’s skilled attendance and nursing, together with bed and board.  In the event of Mavis wanting medical advice, Mrs Gowler had an arrangement with a doctor by which he charged the moderate fee of a shilling a visit to any of her patients that required his services.  The extreme reasonableness of the terms inclined Mavis to decide on going to Mrs Gowler’s.

“There’s only one thing,” she said:  “I’ve a dog; she’s a great pet and quite clean.  If you wouldn’t object to her coming, I might—­”