Two
W ith the feeling of Columbus setting out to discover a new world, Miss Marple passed over the bridge, continued onto the path and within four minutes was actually in Aubrey Close.
Of course Miss Marple had seen the Development from the Market Basing Road, that is, had seen from afar itsCloses and rows of neat well-built houses, with their television masts and their blue and pink and yellow and greenpainted doors and windows. But until now it had only had the reality of a map, as it were. She had not been in it and ofit. But now she was here, observing the brave new world that was springing up, the world that by all accounts wasforeign to all she had known. It was like a neat model built with child’s bricks. It hardly seemed real to Miss Marple.
The people, too, looked unreal. The trousered young women, the rather sinister-looking young men and boys, theexuberant bosoms¹ of the fifteen-year-old girls. Miss Marple couldn’t help thinking that it all looked terribly depraved.
Nobody noticed her much as she trudged² along. She turned out of Aubrey Close and was presently in DarlingtonClose. She went slowly and as she went she listened avidly³ to the snippets of conversation between mothers wheelingprams, to the girls addressing young men, to the sinister-looking Teds⁴ (she supposed they were Teds) exchanging darkremarks with each other. Mothers came out on doorsteps calling to their children who, as usual, were busy doing allthe things they had been told not to do. Children, Miss Marple reflected gratefully, never changed. And presently shebegan to smile, and noted⁵ down in her mind her usual series of recognitions.
That woman is just like Carry Edwards—and the dark one is just like that Hooper girl—she’ll make a mess of hermarriage just like Mary Hooper did. Those boys—the dark one is just like Edward Leeke, a lot of wild talk but noharm in him—a nice boy really—the fair one is Mrs. Bedwell’s Josh all over again. Nice boys, both of them. The onelike Gregory Binns won’t do very well, I’m afraid. I expect he’s got the same sort of mother….
She turned a corner into Walsingham Close and her spirits rose every moment.
The new world was the same as the old. The houses were different, the streets were called Closes, the clothes weredifferent, the voices were different, but the human beings were the same as they always had been. And though usingslightly different phraseology, the subjects of conversation were the same.

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