Many Happy Returns

    Mrs. Butterworth gives the impression that she, like Number 6, are recent arrivals in The Village, because she is still wearing the same dress she did the last time we saw her back in London. But there is no indication of the duration of time between the moment Number 6 drove off in his Lotus 7, and the moment Mrs. Butterworth walked in through the door as the new Number 2. It is clearly impossible to say with any certainty when Mrs. Butterworth arrived in The Village. But I should imagine it was a good deal sooner than Number 6. Well she would have to have taken up office, and given time to settle in, not to mention the baking of the cake!
    During this episode Number 6 was treated to the first genuine act of kindness since his abduction to The Village, by a young Romany woman, who gave him a hot cup of tea, soup, or broth. Her act of kindness was probably brought about by meeting someone worse off than she, this raggedy man. Then later this raggedy man shows up on the doorstep of what had once been his home. Mrs. Butterworth takes him into his home, although Martha the housemaid looks down her nose at him. Mrs. Butterworth feeds and waters the man, but as he’s about to leave the house, having two calls to make, she shouts at him, with some feeling I might add, that he mustn’t go like that. She then invites him to wash and shave, and borrow some of her late husband’s clothes. And if it wasn’t bad enough to be entertained in what was your own home, the merry widow allows him to borrow his own car to aid him in being able to get about!
    Yes Mrs. Butterworth turned out to be another of those working for The Village, but back in London Number 6 wasn’t to know that. However, this would be the last act of kindness Number 6 would receive from a woman for quite some time, because next up is ‘Dance of The Dead,’ a seemingly female orientated episode.

Be seeing you