Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1942-06-26
A Cleaning Woman
Starts a Romance
Which She Later
Has to Rescue
IN TWO PARTS-PART ONE

my bunch of all-sorts.' That's
what call this lot O. people I go out
to oblige." said Mrs. Bunnitt.
A mop Of thistledown hair over
merry. winter-apple face. a string bag
with the blue overall which she wore
when cleaning-that was Mrs. Bunnitt,
daily woman.
And while most people have glanced
up at a big block Of flats and thought.
Fun 1t would be to remove that front.
bodily just as one opens dolls house
Intriguing, to find out what the Diff
ferent tenants were like; what were
their various life stories. jobs, ro-
nance? II only one could take a peep
in and know" Mrs. Bunnitt had
achieved this wish-dream.
Mrs. Bunnitt, who Obliged" tenants
Of five flats in the block, knew con-
siderablv more about them than they
knew about each other.
Friends with all the bunch. that's
me- said Mrs. Bunnitt. pass each
other every day on the stairs for years
and never spoken a word to each other
yet, that's them!"
Thus she summed up Fastidious Ok
ford, No. IL: Wild Bohemia. No. 10:
Crisp Chicago, twho lived alone and
liked 1t at No. 100, and the others.
Why, Mrs. Bunnitt knew more about
them than they knew about them
selves. since she possessed Imagination,
plus passionately sympathetic inter-
est in her fellow-creatures.
In other words she was born a Welsh
girl. She had married at the end Of
1918 an English ex-service man. from
whom she had acquired the Cockney
idiom now grated onto her musical
Welsh accent. Hopefully they had
started their milk business. Then ex-
Corporal Bunnitt had gone sick, gone
altogether. So had his business, his
savings. His widow lived in one room
over her nephew's small dairy, which
was minutes walk away from the
work which brought her such varie-
gated contacts.
First call: Her" No. 9, young lady,
who. when she emerged from the en-
trance to the flats, looked too blonde,
too steep in the heel and too enthus-
1astically made-up to be respectable
according to other tenants.
Only Mrs. Bunnitt knew that No. 9
was one Of the worlds workers who
earned her living as a mannequin on
whom were modelled dresses to help
keep up Britain's credit in the South
American markets. For many exhaust
ing hours a day, No. 9 had to stand
while her plant stem of a body served
as dressmaker's dummy to the tenn
permental dress artist who would push
her this way and that, twirling her
about. digging pins into her as though
she were indeed thing of wire and
canvas.
Mrs. Bunnitt saw the poor child first
thing in the morning, wrapped in a
faded kimono and hurrying over her
breakfast before she began the long,
expert, unhurried performance Of put
ting on her warpaint.
Mrs. Bunnitt also knew of that hole
in the heart of No. 9 which never
stopped aching whatever she did, how
ever she looked.
Mrs. Bunnitt's No. 10 was another
of the worlds workers; but she now
did look the part.
She was a slick. slim ankled, young
American who had been over here on
q visit to cousins in Kent and had
got herself stranded in Britain at the
outbreak of the war. That u.s. girl less
poised might have been stranded.
Not Virginia Remington.
She elected to stay in London to
"see the party through"-that party
having not yet openly spread to her
side of the Atlantic. Meantime, she
found herself a job in a shipping Of
flee. She bought, secondhand, that es-
sential to American life, an icebox.
Then she installed it, with her gadget
for drying silk stockings, and herself,
in the smallest flatlet in Mrs. Bunnitt's
block.
Crisply tailored, always with dazz-
ling lingerie-collar, always exquisitely
shod, she always had her terse little
hat on her shining coppery head as
she drank her coffee; always her hand
bag containing notebook, fountain pen,
memoranda and season ticket lay
ready on the table beside her.
Look a proper little business lady,
don't you?"
"Why yes, Mrs. Bunnitt. It's what
I certainly am. I guess you couldn't
imagine me except in an office back
ground complete with typewriters and
files"
Mrs. Bunnitt smiled.
She could see that girl in the coun-
try, ever so happy, with nice hus-
band to look after in a pretty house
of her own. Not rushing off to that
gloomy old city office every morning
to spend her young life banging type
writer! Proper little home girl, that's
her. Wasted on anything else. First
rate little housewife she'd make. Teach
them something at No. IL, she could!
For No. II, the biggest of Mrs. Bum
nitt's flats. housed an Irish couple,
who kept an elderly resident maid as
well as paying Mrs. Bunnitt to come in
and give a hand. Generous, but happy
go-lucky! Even with a war on, they'd
leave pound note blowing about with
the kitchen window open.
Different from those two at No. IL.
Born old maids if ever Mrs. Bunnitt
seen any! actually, they were two
mild young men, not so long down from
the university, who could not pass the
doctor and who remained in their
school mastering jobs) Compared with
the way they kept their belongings.
the ant is casual.
Mrs. Bunnitt's favorite, however. was