You can't hide anything from Mom. Not if your mom is Mrs Mooney. As readers, we don't even find out the secret until she does: the first time we get wind of an affair between Polly and Mr Doran is when Mrs Mooney "noticed that something was going on" (The Boarding House.4). We should have known from the start that she'd be in control of things, this woman who got a divorce from her drunk husband when you couldn't just like a divorce lawyer's Facebook page and annul your holy matrimony. Oh, did we forget to mention that she ran a butcher's shop? Yeah, don't mess with this mom.