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The Flower-Patch Among the Hills

by Flora Klickmann · English · Gutenberg #51228 · 415,093 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Flower-Patch Among the Hills

Author: Flora Klickmann


        
Release date: February 16, 2016 [eBook #51228]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLOWER-PATCH AMONG THE HILLS ***

[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and italic
text is surrounded by _underscores_.]


    The Flower-Patch
    Among the Hills

[Illustration: _Flora Klickmann_]




The Flower-Patch Among the Hills

    By
    FLORA KLICKMANN

    Editor of
    “The Girl’s Own Paper and Woman’s Magazine”


    NEW YORK
    Frederick A. Stokes Company
    Publishers




    PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
    WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
    STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.




    Dedicated to
    My Husband




    There twice a day the Severn fills;
        The salt sea-water passes by,
        And hushes half the babbling Wye,
    And makes a silence in the hills.
                            _In Memoriam._




I

Just to Explain


I. Who Everybody is

Virginia and her sister Ursula are my most intimate friends.
Virginia—really quite a harmless girl—imagines she has a scientific
bias. Ursula—domesticated to the backbone—led a strenuous life in the
pursuit of experimental psychology, till she switched off to wash
hospital saucepans.

It will be so obvious that I scarcely need add: What little common
sense the trio possesses is centred in ME.

Abigail is my housemaid; her title to fame is the fact that she is the
only servant I have ever been able to induce to remain more than a
fortnight at one stretch in the country. The others, including those
who are orphans, always have a parent who suddenly breaks its leg—after
they have been about ten days away—and wires for them to come home at
once.

The cook has discovered a number of cousins in the Naval Division at
the Crystal Palace (detachments of which pass my London house hourly,
while many units partake of my cake and lemonade), and, of course, you
can’t neglect your relatives in war time.

“You never know whether that’ll be the last time you’ll see them,” she
says, waving a tearful tea-towel at all and sundry who march past.
Naturally, _she_ doesn’t care to be away from town for many days at a
time.

The parlourmaid was interested in a member of the L.C.C. Fire Brigade,
when he enlisted, and incidentally married someone else—unfortunately
the very week she was away with me. This has given her a marked
distaste for the simple pleasures of rural life.

Abigail is unengaged. “What I ask is: What better off are you if you
are?” she inquires of space. “Take my sister, now, with eight children,
and——” But as I am not taking anyone with eight children just now, the
sister’s biography is neither here nor there.

Abigail is a willing, kindhearted girl. Also she has a mania for trying
to arrange every single household ornament in pairs. She would be
invaluable to anyone outfitting a Noah’s Ark.

       *       *       *       *       *

As for the other people who walk through these pages, they do not
appertain exclusively to one district. I have had two cottages, one
beyond Godalming, in Surrey, the other high up among the hills that
border the river Wye. Some of the country folk live in the one village,
some in the other; but the scenery, the little wild things, and the
garden are all related to the cottage that overlooks Tintern Abbey.


II. Why the Cottage is

I took a cottage in the country on a day when I had got to the fag-end
of the very last straw, and felt I could not endure for another minute
the screech of the trains, the honking of motors, the clanging of
bells, the clatter of milk-carts, the grind-and-screel of electric
cars, the ever-ringing telephone, the rattle and roar of the general
traffic, the all-pervading odour of petrol, and the many other horrors
that make both day and night hideous in our great city, and reduce the
workers to nervous wreckage.

The cottage has been so arranged that not one solitary thing within its
walls shall bear any relation to the city left far behind; and nothing
is allowed to remind the occupants of the business rush, the social
scramble, and the electric-light-type of existence that have become
integral parts of modern life in towns.

Here, to keep my idle hands from mischief, I made me a Flower-patch.


III. Why this Book is

I was viciously prodding up bindweed out of the cottage garden, with
the steel kitchen poker, when the telegraph boy opened the gate.

Unhinging my back, and inducing it into the upright with painful care,
I read a message from my office to the effect that there was some hitch
in regard to the American copyright of a certain article I had passed
for press before leaving; this would necessitate it being thrown out of
the magazine that month. Would I wire back what should go in its place,
as the machines were at a standstill?

Under ordinary circumstances I should merely have waved a hand, and
instantly a suitable substitute would have been on the machines with
scarcely a perceptible pause—that is, if I had been in London. But such
is the witchery of the Flower-patch, that no sooner do I get inside the
gate than I forget every mortal thing connected with my office. And try
how I would, I couldn’t recall what possible articles I had already in
hand that would make exactly six pages and a quarter—the length of the
one held over.

And because I could think of nothing else on the spur of the moment, I
threw down the poker (it was red-rust, alas, when I chanced upon it a
week later) and went indoors and wrote about the cottage and the hills.

When it was published in the magazine, readers very kindly wrote by
the bagful begging for a continuation. It has been continuing—with
perennial requests for more—for some time now. This only shows how
generously tolerant of editors are the readers of periodical literature.

Virginia merely sniffs, “What won’t people buy!”

I don’t think she need have put it so baldly as that.

       *       *       *       *       *

If by some miraculous chance there should be any profits from the sale
of this book, I intend to devote them to the purchase of a cow (or hen,
if it doesn’t run to a cow), to aid the national larder. I shall call
it “the Memorial Cow,” in memory of those who have been good enough to
assist in its purchase.

Should any reader wish to have the cow (or hen) named specially after
him—or her—self this could doubtless be arranged. Particulars on
application to the publisher.




II

About Getting There


WE always consider that emancipation takes place at one exact spot on
the Great Western Railway; the only difficulty is that Virginia and I
never agree as to which is the exact spot.

Virginia insists that the air suddenly changes just beyond Chepstow
Station, where we change from the London and South Wales main line to
the local train that, two or three times a day (week-days only), runs
through our particular Valley, like a small boy’s toy affair.

This train, which makes up in black smoke for what it lacks of other
dignity, steams out of the main line junction with an important snort
and rumble; over the bridge it goes, and the stranger would imagine
it was well under way. But no; it then comes to a standstill at the
point where the main line and the Valley line meet, in order that
the gentleman who lives—we presume—in the signal-box (but who is
always standing on the railway line when we see him) may hand to our
engine-driver a metal staff—some sort of a key, they tell me, which is
said to unlock the single railway line. I don’t pretend to understand
the process myself. I only know that our engine-driver looks lovingly
at it as though it were the apple of his eye (I’ve craned my head out
of the window, that’s how I know), and clasps it to his chest, until he
gets to the first station on the Valley line, where he hands it over to
the station-master, who, in turn, gives him another one, to which he
clings just as pathetically.

In this leisurely way we proceed up the Valley.

It wouldn’t have any deep significance, but for the fact that Virginia
maintains it is the first key that unlocks the imprisoned Ego within
her, and sets her soul free from the trammels and shackles and cobwebs
and chains, hampering, warping, and enmeshing her, that have been
riveted by the blighting tendencies of London (and a lot more to the
same effect). She says she feels the fetters burst directly that
key is handed over, for she knows then that the train is beyond the
possibility of making a mistake, and getting back on to the London main
line again instead of the single pair of Valley rails.

Then it is that the air becomes fresher than ever. The primroses that
grow all up the rocks, just beyond the signal-box, are very much finer
than those on the junction side; the Sweet Betsey (alias red valerian)
starts to drape the ledges with rosy-crimson as soon as the signalman
walks back up the wooden steps to his cabin. And Virginia herself
becomes a different being, though opinions are painfully divided as to
whether the change is for the better or for the worse.

She says she feels just like the Lord Mayor, or the Speaker in the
House of Commons, with a myrmidon going on ahead of her bearing the
mace.

We just let her talk on when she gets lightheaded like this. After all,
this Rod of Office which the engine-driver cherishes is what Virginia
waits for through four hours of express train—six if you go by a
slow one. And the spot where he receives it on the line is where she
develops a beatific smile of wondrous amiability.

For me, the chains snap a little further on.

After the driver has received his Key of Office the train meanders
peacefully through west country orchards, placid meadows, and
tawny-gold cornfields; past grey-brown haystacks; past little cottages,
each with its pig-sty and scratting hens, and a clothes-line displaying
pinafores and sundry other garments only mentioned _sotto voce_ in the
paper pattern section of ladies’ papers. Small, hatless, yellow-haired
children, gathering daisies or cowslips in adjoining fields, wave at us
as we go by.

Then the engine braces itself for a mighty effort, and gives a
business-like shriek on its whistle (this is the great exploit of the
whole journey) as it plunges into a very long, dark, clattering tunnel,
cut through solid rock. Here we sit in the breathless darkness for
several minutes, to emerge finally upon scenery so unlike that we left
behind at the entrance to the tunnel as to suggest that we had entered
another country.

Gone are the cornfields, the gentle undulations, gone the farms and
cottages, the hayricks and barns. Almost in sheer precipices the rocks
rise up from the rushing winding river in the valley below, clothed
from summit to base with forest trees. The train, now an insignificant
atom on the face of Nature, puffs vigorously along a ledge cut half-way
up the face of these giant hills.

From the windows on one side of the train you look down upon a world of
rocks, trees and water, to the Horse Shoe bend, where the river turns
and twists and doubles back on itself again. Not a house is in sight.

The windows on the other side show more grey rocks rising up out of
sight, with trees growing where you would scarcely think they could
find root-hold, much less food to live and thrive on. And where it is
bare stone, and there are no trees, the scarred and jagged surface of
the rocks—due to far-away earth-rends and more modern rock-slides—is
lovingly swathed and festooned with trails of Travellers’ Joy and ivy
and bryony; while ferns and foxgloves, wild strawberries and Mother of
Millions flourish on the narrow ledges, and sprout out from sheltered
crannies—such a mist of delicate loveliness veiling all that is grim
and cold and hard.

Even the wooden posts, from which wire is stretched to fence off the
railway company’s land from the adjoining woods, are entirely covered
with a living mosaic of small-leaved ivy, patterned, with no two
scrolls alike, in a way that human hand could never copy.

Below there is always the river, that swirls and rushes noisily at
low tide over its weirs. A heron stands motionless on a grey-green
moss-covered boulder near the bank. He looks up at the little train;
but it is too far away to worry him. He, and a kite circling high
overhead, are the only signs of life to be seen as one passes along.
Yet the whole earth is teeming with small folk, furred and feathered;
the rarest of butterflies are glinting over the rocks; the otter is
hiding down in the river-pools; and from time to time a salmon leaps
into the air, a flash, a streak of silver, and a series of eddying
ripples—that is all.

This is the spot where, for me, a new life begins; where unconsciously
I draw my breath with a deep intake, and suddenly feel the past
slipping from me; the noise and din, the sordidness and care of the
city fade into the background and become nothing more substantial than
some remote nightmare.

Here in this Valley of Peace and Quietness my dreams become realities.
And best of all, here God seems to lay His Hand on tired heart and
tired brain; and I find myself saying, “This is the rest wherewith ye
may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing.”

       *       *       *       *       *

We had just witnessed the presentation of the first key. As usual,
Virginia and I had been arguing—no, that isn’t the right word; I never
argue; I merely discuss things intelligently. At any rate, we had been
exchanging views (that differed) as to the exact place where we noticed
the great change come over ourselves in particular, and things in
general. As we didn’t get any nearer a final settlement we appealed to
Ursula, who was sitting silent, with a far-away look in her eyes, as of
one engaged in bridging space and measuring the stars.

She came back to earth, however, at our question, and said she was
absolutely sure the moment of _her_ great transformation was when
she got hold of a cup of proper domestic tea, as distinct from the
indigestive railway variety. Indeed, for the past few minutes she had
been entirely absorbed in the mental contemplation of the meal she
hoped Abigail would soon be preparing. Even then she could smell the
sizzling ham and the frying eggs and the buttered toast we should have
on arrival.

We were in the sulphurous depths of the tunnel at the moment. Naturally
I was hurt. As I said to her, I knew my board was frugal, and my viands
simple, modest, unaffected and unassuming, but at least they didn’t
smell like _that_!

Fortunately she hadn’t much time to explain what she did and what she
didn’t mean, for we came out of the tunnel into the panorama of hills
and silence; no one ever talks much just here, save the braying type of
tourist.

Besides, there is the “Abbey” to watch for. No matter how many times
you may see that, you always wait expectantly for the moment when you
catch the first glimpse of the wonderful grey ruin.

The abbey-makers of the olden days not only knew how to build, but they
also knew how to “place” their beautiful structures. And the setting of
our Abbey is as nearly perfect as anything can be in this world.

The steep hills recede a little bit just at one bend of the river,
leaving room for a broad green meadow between the water and the
uprising steeps. Here the Abbey was placed: a babbling river in the
foreground, dark larch-covered hills in the background. Surely it is
no fanciful exaggeration to think that the beauty all around them must
have influenced the men who raised that wonderful poem in stone!

I would like to take you into the Abbey and show you the beautiful
views that can be seen from every ruined window, each one a framed
picture in itself; the spray of oak-leaves carved on one piece of
stone, the live snapdragons growing out of buttresses, the graceful
spring of each slender arch, the perfect proportions of the whole
building, for, despite the cruel wreckage it suffered in the past, it
is still the most lovely Gothic ruin in England.

But to-day we can’t stay.

The train hurries on, through another short tunnel, over a bridge
spanning the river and a talkative weir, and then into our station.

In the summer there is a good deal of bustle in this station, which
is the haunt of many tourists. I am told that five out of every
ten visitors are from the United States. No American thinks of
“doing” England without seeing our valley, which is famous for its
scenery and its ruins. Thus you always find a number of women in
trim “shirt-waists,” and wearing large chiffon veils on the top of
their hats at angles quite unknown to the English woman, sitting on
the platform about train time, writing the usual budget of picture
postcards.

But we aren’t “foreigners” (as the natives style everyone who doesn’t
belong to their village). That is one of the many charms of arriving
at this station. Here no one regards us merely as passengers who
can’t find their luggage; or, passengers who have changed where they
had no business to; or, passengers who expect the local porter to
know by heart all the railway connections and times of return trains
throughout the British Isles. Neither are we among the people who
look suspiciously at every wagonette driver, certain that he is going
to overcharge, and uncertain as to which is likely to overcharge the
least. We have no anxieties concerning the truth of the advertised
merits of the various hotels, and apartments to let, in the village.

We “belong.”

There is a sense of home-coming in our arrival. The porters actually
rush forward to help with our luggage, and the station-master raises
his cap.

Old Bob—who occupies the doubly proud position of being the only one
among the fly proprietors who displays a pair of steeds attached to his
vehicle, while he is also the one who usually drives what he describes
as “the e-light-y”—is waiting with his wagonette (and pair, don’t
forget) and a cart for the luggage.

It really is comforting to be claimed by someone at the end of a
journey, if it be but the wagonette driver. I feel so solitary,
such an orphan, when I chance to arrive alone at some strange place
in quest of a holiday, possibly unknown to a single person but the
landlady-to-be. Don’t you know the sinking feeling that comes over
you as you look round upon the crowds of people, some scrambling in,
and some scrambling out of the train; every face a blank so far as you
are concerned? No one to trouble whether you ever get any further, or
whether you remain in that jostling turmoil for ever.

You almost wish you could get into the train and go back to town again;
you reflect that there at least the butcher knows you, and the people
next door, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner.

You revive after having some tea, but it is possible to spend a very
doleful, homesick quarter of an hour between the time you get out of
the train and the time you sit down to a meal in some strange room,
whose painful unlikeness to the ones you live in accentuates your
loneliness.

But that never happens to us in our Valley. Before we have got out of
our compartment, Abigail is already on the platform and holding a levee
consisting of two porters, the signalman, the assistant engine-driver
from a goods train in the siding, and old Bob’s nephew, who drives the
cart. All lend a hand as she proceeds to marshal the luggage, and with
a peremptory wave of her umbrella, directs its disposal.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of course there really isn’t much luggage. That is one of the
advantages of retreating to your own secluded cottage; being off
the beaten track as we are, there is no necessity to take many
“toilettes”—either demi or semi—or a large variety of lounge robes,
or matinées, or boudoir negligées, or rest frocks, or tea-gowns, or
cocoa-coats, or evening wraps built of chiffon, and really necessary,
handy things of that sort. All we take with us is just a few clothes to
wear.

On one occasion Virginia did bring down a long “article” (I don’t
know what else to call it) composed of about ten yards of white net,
embroidered here and there with large beads, an artificial rose sewn
on to one corner of the curtain-like thing, a gilt-metal fringe
suggestive of shoelace tags all around the edges. She couldn’t quite
understand how she came by it, she said. She remembered an energetic
ultra-elegant shop-assistant, somewhere, displaying it before her,
with the information that it was a “slumber swirl,” and assuring her,
condescendingly, that it was the very latest, and absolutely sweet, and
just the thing for outdoors in the summer. Virginia said she agreed
with her, she was sure; knowing her own sweet and plastic disposition,
she would certainly have agreed with her; she was thankful to say she
wasn’t one of those people who perpetually disagree with other people.
But—she had no recollection of having attached her name and address to
the wisp, much less of having paid for it! Still, the energetic damsel
had sent it home—and here it was!

Ursula, after one glance at the confection, hastily turned her eyes
away and announced that, for her part, she didn’t consider it—well,
quite adequate!

Her sister explained that it wasn’t supposed to be worn _that_ way;
and she arranged herself with closed eyes on the sofa to show us how
it would look when draped over her—head and all—as she rested in the
hammock. It took a lot of adjusting so as to avoid getting some knobbly
bead motif just under her ear, and to prevent the shoe-lace tags
attacking the under-side of the face. And when she had at last found a
spot of unembellished net on which to lay her rose-leaf cheek, she was
afraid to move for fear of splitting the frail net.

Ursula merely snorted.

When next I saw the “slumber swirl,” part of it had been converted into
a meat-safe of irreproachable moral character, Ursula having utilised
the frame of our getting-worn-out one for the purpose.

       *       *       *       *       *

No; our luggage is only trifling, and only consists of just what we
need. Abigail takes mine and her own to Paddington in a bus, which also
picks up the luggage of the other two girls _en route_. Individually,
the details do not seem much, but I confess, when I see it dumped all
together on the platform, the aggregate looks somewhat nondescript.

There will be four large hat-boxes (or five if Abigail brings more than
one); anything from three to seven trunks; Abigail’s collapsible straw
basket; a bundle of umbrellas and sunshades; the dog, in his travelling
basket; a chip basket containing pots of mysterious seedlings Virginia
has been specially raising in town (which usually get upset once or
twice on the way, and have been known to turn out docks). There is
sure to be a cardboard box for one of Abigail’s best Jap silk Sunday
frocks that she doesn’t want to get crushed; a string bag containing
Abigail’s novels and snippety weeklies, her crochet, a few oranges, two
bananas, some chocolate, and whatever other refreshment she will need
on the journey; a brown-paper parcel holding a few articles of wearing
apparel, also belonging to Abigail, that she only remembered at the
last minute, and cook did up for her.

Then Ursula is sure to bring some contribution to the larder—perhaps
tomatoes and a cake. Naturally, there is our lunch basket; and I,
personally, never feel complete unless I have my leather dispatch-box
beside me. I also take a suit-case containing my mackintosh—in case
it rains when I arrive—books and papers which I never read, knitting,
and similar necessities for the journey; it is also useful as a final
receptacle for oddments I omitted to pack elsewhere. Virginia and
Ursula bring similar suit-cases, for similar reasons.

Sometimes Abigail springs surprises on us at the last minute. “Whatever
have you there?” I asked one day, as she joined us on the Paddington
platform, a jangling parcel in one hand that sounded like a badly
cracked bell, and a large protrusion—silent, fortunately—embraced in
the other arm.

“Oh, this is just a new zinc pail” (shaking the musical packet), “we
need an extra one; and I’ve put in a little iron shovel, as I want one
for my kitchen scuttle: and there’s a nutmeg grater too; the one down
there is getting rusty. And _this_” (nodding towards her chest) “is an
enamel washing-up bowl. Our big one down there leaks.”

And she proceeded serenely on her way to the accompaniment of iron
shovel clink-clanging against zinc pail, with the nutmeg-grater
tintinnabulating cheerfully in a higher key—and evidently pleased at
the public interest she was arousing.

Not that her surprises are always so useful. On one occasion I noticed
she had brought two collapsible straw baskets, but concluded she had
some very special new frocks for the flower show. The porter disposed
of the luggage—while Abigail was looking the bookstall over. When she
returned and found both baskets missing, she rushed to the guard’s van.
Soon things were being dragged out again, Abigail excitedly urging
haste. The guard helped, Abigail assisting with much conversation.

Eventually she lugged one basket up to her own compartment, scorning
the help of the penitent porter. As she passed my compartment, a
heartrending “mee-au” came from the basket.

“What in the world—!!—!!!” I began.

“It’s only Angelina,” Abigail explained. “She hasn’t seemed well
lately. I thought a change of air might do her good. Only it gave me a
bit of a fright when I found they’d put her in the van, thinking she
was luggage!”

(Incidentally, Angelina is _my_ cat.)

Being my own place and not someone else’s we are going to, it
occasionally happens that there are items of furnishing that need to
go down, a mirror, for instance, that is too large to pack in a trunk.
Strictly speaking, the railway company might be within their rights
if they argued that such things could not legitimately be called
passenger’s luggage; but Virginia said, with regard to the mirror—4
feet × 2—that if they objected to take it, she should tell them every
woman is entitled to carry a mirror among her personal luggage.

Fortunately no one so far has objected to any of the details of our
_impedimenta_, so long as the excess charges are promptly paid. We
usually go down with the same guard. I tell him what the contraband
is. He carries the parcel off majestically, assuring me that his one
eye won’t leave it all the way down, no matter where the other may be
focused; and he begs me to have no anxiety as to its safety. I haven’t.
I know from long experience that the guards and officials on the G.W.R.
have elevated politeness and courtesy from a mere duty to a fine art.

Sometimes I almost wish they wouldn’t take quite such care of our
things! There was the brown pitcher, for instance. I had been wanting
a very large one for fetching the water from the spring outside the
cottage gate. Of course, I know you can get big enamel jugs (painted
duck-egg blue, or anything else in the art line that you fancy);
but the latter seems so strident, so townified, so newly-rich, so
over-dressed, when you see them beside our moss-grown wooden spout,
where the mountain spring splashes down into a stony hollow, among
ferns and long mosses. The sturdy but humble brown pitcher tones in
better with the pale yellow sand in the bottom of the hollow, the
browns and greys and greens of the stones and growing things all round.
The very water falls into it with a mellow musical sound, instead of
the hollow tinny ring that the enamelled creature gives forth.

But I couldn’t see one in the village shop as big as I required.
Ursula, however, ran against the very thing unexpectedly in town. The
only difficulty was the packing, so she decided to carry it just as it
was. Virginia expressed a sincere hope that she would at least tie a
pale blue bow on the handle.

She got it safely as far as Paddington, but here an iron pillar
suddenly ran alongside and torpedoed the pitcher—so she said—knocking a
small but very business-like hole clean through its bulging side. Then
the question arose: What was she to do with the remnants? The train
was due to start in two minutes, so she hadn’t time to inquire for the
station dust-bin.

Virginia suggested that she should try to induce the bookstall boy to
accept it as payment for a packet of milk chocolate; failing that,
she had better put an advertisement in the paper offering a wonderful
specimen of antique Roman pottery in exchange for a sable motoring
coat, or a cartload of white mice.

What she did do was to leave it tidily on the nearest seat, with the
intention of bestowing sixpence on the first porter she could waylay if
he would make himself responsible for its after career. But apparently
every employee at Paddington Station had enlisted.

The whistle was blown, and the train started to move slowly, just as
the vigilant eye of the guard fell upon the disabled crock. His face
lighted up. He seized it, rushed to the moving compartment containing
Ursula. “Madam,” he gasped, “you have forgotten this,” and he thrust it
into her arms.

She didn’t dare try to leave it behind any more!

       *       *       *       *       *

Then there was the fish. It was on an occasion when Virginia was
coming down by herself, and thus lacked the restraining, and more
practical, hand of Ursula. Now, as I have already hinted, Virginia is
an intelligent girl. She can tell you exactly how many million tons of
certain chemicals could be excavated from the very bottom of Vesuvius
(if only they could manage to put the fire out, of course), and how,
if these million tons were applied to the land in Mars, as artificial
manure, the wheat crop they would produce in one year—if only you could
raise their temperature a few hundred degrees, and this could easily be
done if you transfer—by wireless—the heat that isn’t needed in Vesuvius
to Mars (or is it the moon?), where they do want it—why, then—(where
was I?)—Oh, yes, the wheat crop they would harvest per annum would be
sufficient to feed the whole of the inhabitants of this planet of ours,
and several others thrown in, for—I forgot how many dozen years.

Yes, she is a very bright girl, just as well informed on any other
subject you like to mention—excepting fish! There she draws a woeful
blank: she has no more notion how to tell fresh fish at sight than a
baby!

Still, she is generous in her intentions, and as no one ever thinks
of journeying to the cottage without taking something in the eatable
line—it is only right to take a little present when you go to stay with
friends, isn’t it?—Virginia cast about as to what she could bring. Game
has no attraction—we have plenty of that. Fish, on the contrary, is a
rarity. Although our river is full, we seldom see fish at the cottage,
excepting a very over-due variety that a man peddles round occasionally.

So she decided on fish—alas! And hastened into the first fishmonger’s
she saw and ordered a dozen pairs of soles. She maintains that wasn’t
what she meant to ask for. It was oysters she wanted to bestow on me,
and she went in with the definite intention of purchasing a dozen
oysters. At that moment, however, her mind was somewhat pre-occupied
with a scientific invention she was thinking out, whereby no woman need
ever again handle a broom or carpet-sweeper or anything of that kind.

It was a simple device, consisting of a vacuum between the layers
of leather on the bottom of the shoe, and some sort of a suction
arrangement whereby you drew up the dust from the carpet (or wherever
you walked) just by stepping on it. You would clear as you go, and
instead of a person trailing dirt up and down the stairs by walking
straight in from the garden and up to the top attic, they would really
be giving the stair carpet what would be equal to a good brushing.

Moreover, not only would spring cleaning be banished for ever—when her
invention was perfected—but your shoes would never more need mending.
The dust collected in the shoe, being subject to so many cubic inches
of pressure due to the person standing on top of the shoe, would become
so compressed and self-adhesive as to offer a direct resistance to the
friction set up between boot and alien matter trodden upon, equal to
the inverse ratio of—I haven’t the faintest notion what! But I dare say
you can follow her line of argument. She herself says she is always
lucid and concise.

At any rate, I remember she said that it was terribly hard to be the
mother of a huge family of boys, who not only trailed dust and dirt
into the house at all times and seasons, but also wore out innumerable
pairs of boots into the bargain. Whereupon I reminded her that neither
of us need worry personally about that just yet!

She agreed, but said that did not alter her desire to benefit her day
and generation, and to rid the world of “the Burden of the Broom.”
And she was meditating on this, and thinking of all the leather we
had wasted by letting it wear off the bottoms of our boots, when
she saw the fish shop, and though she _thought_ a dozen “oysters,”
what she _said_ was a dozen “pairs of soles”—and, of course, I would
recognise that the mistake wasn’t her fault; it was entirely due to the
psychological action of the subconscious something that connected soles
with boots, etc.

Anyhow, the result was that she paid cheerfully for such a collection
of fish as I hope I may never see again. And how happy that fishmonger
must have been, when the transaction was completed, only those who got
a whiff of the fish can estimate.

Virginia admitted that she thought the price seemed a lot for a dozen
oysters (soles were two shillings a pound at the time), and the bag
seemed heavy. Also, she confessed that it was a trifle more than she
had intended to spend on a present for me at that moment, though she,
being a real lady, would have been the last to mention it if I hadn’t.
No, she hadn’t thought to look at what he put in; she merely told him
to pack them up very securely, as she was going on a long railway
journey. She didn’t know they were soles till she glanced at the bill
in the train. She consoled me with the information that fish has the
most wonderful phosphorescent properties, invaluable in the case of
brain-fag; and she should see that I ate it all!

After a few miles of the journey the soles grew a little noisy in the
rack. You don’t want to look a gift-horse in the mouth—truth to tell, I
didn’t want to look at that particular gift at all. But I had to open
both windows.

At our first stop, Reading, when the guard came to the door and
politely inquired, “Are you ladies all right? Can I get you anything?”
I asked him if he would be so good as to take charge of the big rush
bag. I suggested that he could tie it on to the back buffer at the very
end of the train. I assured him it was nothing that would hurt. But he
only smiled, and said he had plenty of room in his own compartment; the
basket would be quite safe there, no one would touch it. I could quite
believe it!

When he came down the platform at Swindon he looked very pale and out
of sorts, I thought. Conscience-stricken, I pressed a shilling into
his hand, and begged him to get himself a good cup of tea. He said he
would, and certainly seemed to have revived when next he passed.

We got it home, eventually, without Abigail detecting it—I wanted to
save Virginia’s face before the handmaiden—as we took the basket,
wrapped up in my mackintosh, in the wagonette with us, Abigail
following behind in the luggage-cart. She did say later, however, that
she wished that pedlar and his awful kippers and bloaters could be
suppressed by law. He had evidently just been round, she said, and she
could smell his wretched fish all the way as she drove up. We didn’t
tell her what we had hidden in the old barn.

We buried them darkly at dead of night. The only soft spot we could
find, that admitted of a good-sized trench being dug without much
trouble, was the moist earth beside the brook in the lower orchard.

Next morning, at breakfast-time, when the small dog ran in to greet us,
his nose and paws showed signs of active service as he joyfully dabbed
brown mud on the front of our fresh print frocks, and waggled his tail
with the air of a dog who is conscious of heroic achievements. Abigail
followed him with the bacon-dish, which, in her excitement, she tried
to balance on the top of the coffee-pot.

“You’d never believe what a high tide there has been in the brook!”
she began. “A spring tide, I should think. It’s washed up hundreds and
hundreds and _hundreds_ of large fish on to the bank. Never saw such
a thing in my life before. First I knew of it was slipping on one on
the kitchen hearthrug. Dandie had brought one in—wanted me to grill
it for his breakfast, I suppose! Then I found he’d carried one up to
the mat outside your bedroom door, and just dropped a few others here
and there about the house. So I went out to see where he got ’em from.
Judging by the smell, they must have lain there for weeks. Wish I’d
been here with a net at the time. I’ve never caught a live fish in my
life, though I’ve often tried to fish in the pond on Peckham Rye.”

Naturally we expressed great interest, and suggested immediate
cremation in the kitchener.

Later on, the handy man was decidedly sceptical. His grandfeyther had
once caught a trout in that brook (only he gave long biographical,
geographical and historical details, which proved that it wasn’t that
brook at all); but he hadn’t a-seed any hisself a-coming down.

Abigail scornfully pointed out that high tides came _up_, and these
fish had been washed _up_ from the river, which is 700 feet below; and
she flapped one as evidence before his astonished eyes.

Seeing is believing in our village!

To this day Abigail’s tales, to cook and co. and her friends at home,
of how she goes out and catches soles as large as plaice in our own
brook, and boils them for supper, equal any fish stories ever told!

       *       *       *       *       *

But to return to the luggage and ourselves, which I left waiting at our
little station.

While the luggage is being stowed into the vehicles, we take stock of
the platform, that seems to fancy itself the pivot of the universe!
Everybody that is going away scrambles into the train with precipitate
haste, as though they were trying to catch a train on the Tube, or a
sprinting motor-bus in the Strand! although they know quite well that
the peaceful old engine—already twenty-five minutes behind time—won’t
think of stirring again until it has had a ten minutes’ nap!

Those who have just arrived seem equally in a hurry to get somewhere
else, and they try to squeeze three thick out of the small station
gate—only to plant themselves in the path just outside for a long
gossip with the first person they see.

There are women with empty baskets returning from market, and women
seeing off friends, each carrying a huge “bookey” of flowers, built
up in the approved style, from the back: first a big background
rhubarb leaf, or something equally green and spacious, then some
striped variegated grass—gardeners’ garters, we call it; also some
southernwood—better known as Old Man’s Beard; tall flowers like
foxgloves, phlox, Japanese anemones, early dahlias and sunflowers
follow; the shorter stems of pinks, calceolarias, sweet williams and
roses are the next in succession; finishing off with some gorgeous
pansies and a very fat cabbage rose with a short stem (that persists
in tumbling out), a piece of sweetbriar, and a few silver and gold
everlasting flowers down low in the front. If you have a geranium in
your window, etiquette demands that you add the best spray—as a special
offering—to the bunch, telling your friend all about the way you got
that geranium cutting, and the trouble you had to rear it.

You know the sort of complacent well-packed bunches that are the
result of this combination. Not artistic, of course, according to town
standards, but, all the same, they are dears; and I always feel I want
every one I see.

The station itself is a flower garden. And even in the space outside,
where the motor-cars await the rich, and the wagonettes and carts await
the nearly-poor, primroses and violets and cowslips and bluebells grow
thick on the banks.

Naturally the arrival of the train is a matter of local importance, and
if you happen to be near the station about train-time you go in and sit
on the platform just to see who comes or goes.

And how well everybody looks, and sturdy, and brown, after the pale
anæmic faces we have left in town! You think how happy they must all
be here in the fresh air and the sunshine. So they ought to be, and so
most of them could be, if only they kept a look-out for happiness, and
seized all that came their way. But human nature the world over seems
to love to contemplate the tragic, or at least to pity itself! The
result is that every other person you meet in our village will tell you
a tale of woe as highly-coloured as anything you hear in town.

“How do you do?” I inquired, last time I arrived, of a comfortable
healthy-looking woman, who had just been seeing her daughter off by
train. Her husband is a steady man, in regular work. She owns the
cottage she lives in, and a pig, and has no difficulty in supplying the
wants of her family, which are few.

“Oh, I’m not up to much, m’m,” she began. “Things is so hard nowadays,
and no one gives _we_ a bit o’ help. There’s that Jane Price, _she_ got
a pound of tea, and a hundudweight of coal, and a red flannel petticut,
from the lady of the manor at Christmas, and _she_ be a widder with
on’y her children. But _I_ on’y got some tea and a petticut (not a nice
colour red neither), no coal nor nothing, and thur I’ve got _he_ to
keep as well as the children, and in course I need it wuss’n her do!”

Further along the platform I spoke to the wife of a small farmer, a
healthy soul, with nothing much to worry her. But she didn’t intend to
be behindhand with trouble! Other people found plenty to moan about;
she wasn’t to be outdone.

“You’ve heard of the awful time I’m having with my husband? Fell down
in the wood and broke his leg in four places! Suffers terrible, he
does.”

I expressed sympathy, and asked how long he had been in bed.

“Oh, he isn’t in bed; can’t spare the time to lay up, with the
haymaking just on. He’s cutting the five-acre field to-day. He gets
about, but he has an abundation of pain at nights. Yes, you’re right.
Very active he is, there’s no keeping him still. He’ll walk to his own
funeral, _he_ will.”

Actually the man had a touch of rheumatism!

       *       *       *       *       *

Finally we are settled in the fly, piled up with the lighter luggage,
while Abigail and old Bob’s nephew follow in the cart.

To the stranger who has never been in our Valley before, the drive to
the Cottage is a thing of wonder; to those of us who do the journey
many times in the course of the year new beauties are always revealing
themselves, and the whole scene seems more lovely each time we look
upon it, if that be possible.

The station is on the river level, down in the green depths of
the Valley. But you cannot go many yards on level ground, as the
hills on either side of the river are steep, with nothing but the
narrowest footpath in places, between their precipitous sides and the
fast-rushing water. In many cases the cottage-gardens on the hill-side
have to be kept up with walls of stone—as one sees the vineyards built
up on steep hill-sides in vine-growing districts—otherwise the rains
and swollen brooks would wash the earth down, in the winter, into the
river below.

The horses start the ascent as soon as they leave the station, and pass
through the small village, which shows a curious medley in the way of
architecture. In the wall of an old cow-house there is a Gothic window,
built probably with stones taken from the ruined Abbey; all the windows
of one cottage bear an ecclesiastical stamp. Before the beautiful ruin
was carefully guarded as it is now, people must have gone and helped
themselves as they pleased to carved stonework and any fragment that
they could make use of; and thus you may find an exquisite bit of
carved stone in a most ordinary three-roomed dwelling. Some of the
cottages and barns may have been part of the Abbey property; at any
rate one comes on architectural surprises in the most unexpected places.

But even though in this district man’s handiwork has achieved wondrous
things, it is the work of Nature that claims the attention.

The Abbey seems a huge pile when you stand under its roofless walls;
but once you start to ascend the hills, everything takes on new
proportions. No longer are you shut in by two high green hill-walls,
the higher you go the smaller become the hills that are nearest to you,
as they reveal far greater giants behind them. The blue Welsh mountains
rise up, still further beyond again.

Below, the river winds and loses itself, seeming to come to an abrupt
end against a barrier of dark green slopes; but it evidently finds
a way out, for it is seen further on in the far distance, a silver,
gleaming band, still winding, and still guarded by mountains that now
are tinged with the purply-blue tone that Nature uses for her distant
effects.

The lanes through which we pass are miracles of loveliness, with
their ferns and flowers and birds and butterflies. But I think one’s
overwhelming thought is of the grandeur of the distances. One is always
looking away to the far-off, to the farms and small homesteads dotted
at rare intervals on far heights and among the forests; to the peaks
beyond peaks; to the light playing on miles of birch and oak; to the
shadowy coombes where hills drop down into other valleys.

I have always noticed, when I am bringing anyone for the first time
from the station to my house, that, though I point out the roadside
springs and waterfalls, the glory of the hedges, the rose-coloured
honeysuckle that grows over one cottage, smothering roof, chimneys
and all, the visitors do not expend so much admiration on any of this,
it is always the inexplicable mystery of the hills that holds them.
Every five minutes takes one higher, and reveals a further panorama.
Beautiful as are the lesser things, lovely as is the old ruined Abbey,
the human and the near seem to slip away from you as you look across
the deep chasm where the river lies below, to the vastness on the
other side. There is a power, a force born of great heights and great
spaces, that cannot be explained, but is surely felt by all who have
not mortgaged their soul to mammon. There was a depth of mystic meaning
in the words of the shepherd poet, even in the world’s young days, when
he wrote: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
my help.”

It takes you about an hour to drive up to the cottage, and by this time
the lane has grown so narrow—and so bumpy!—that you marvel the horses
have ever got you there at all. But when you have reached the little
white gate you stand and look in silence. A new touch is added to the
landscape. You are now high enough to look over the tops of some of the
intervening hills, and there away beyond, between a dip in the hills,
you see a gleaming band of silver, the waters of the Channel.

Some people consider no scenery perfect unless there is a railway in
the foreground to take them back to town as soon as possible. Some
artists always want a touch of scarlet to complete any picture. Myself,
I always think a glimpse of water is needed to make a beautiful view
absolutely satisfying. At my cottage I am doubly blessed! I can see the
river in the Valley below, and beyond there is the Channel, towards
which that river is ever hurrying.

During the drive up, the small white dog with brown ears, sits on the
box seat, dividing his time between shrieking Billingsgate insults
to every local dog (I blush for his manners. And he looks so refined
too!) and licking old Bob’s face. Not that he has any particular
affection for our driver, but he gets quite hysterical when he sees
the countryside and scents the rabbits; and old Bob is the handiest
recipient for his overwhelming gratitude. A few dogs trail after us
through the village, telling him—and one another—what they will do when
they get hold of him; but they fall back when it comes to the hill;
and our own treasure looks triumphantly ahead for new dogs to revile;
deluding himself with the idea that he has slain all behind him, and
left their corpses in the road! Occasionally he ceases to be a bullying
war-dog, and becomes almost human; then he suddenly looks round at
us, wags his tail all he knows how, and gives a little whimper that
plainly says, “Isn’t it good to be here again!” And we all agree.

It _is_ good to see the hills, and the valleys, the sturdy trees, and
the tender little ferns growing out of the walls. Best of all, it is
good to see the small white gate, and the red-tiled roof, and the blue
smoke curling up, oh, so peacefully, from the cottage chimney. It is
good to see the flowers smothering the walls and the garden beds; and
very good to greet one’s own furniture again, one’s own rooms, one’s
own familiar things—no matter how humble they may be.

For months we have clean forgotten that the living-room window
requires two thumps if it is to be got open; yet without a moment’s
hesitation Ursula pulls off her gloves the moment we enter the door,
makes straight for the window, and gives it the requisite couple of
vigorous bangs, so as to let in the evening scent of the honeysuckle
that is thick about the porch. For months, it may be, we have forgotten
entirely that the lid of the biggest brown teapot has a knack of
tumbling off into the teacup, unless it is held on while one pours.
And yet, the moment I take up that teapot again, instinctively my hand
grips the lid.

There is an indefinable spirit of welcome in all these little familiar
things—so commonplace and feeble and stupid they would seem to
outsiders; yet to us they imply that “we belong.” It is part of the
all-pervading rest that we find among these hills, that we go on from
just where we left off last time. We don’t have to start afresh, or
get acquainted with the place, or learn anything new. There is a great
charm in returning to familiar scenes that is missed by those who are
always rushing off on some new quest. True, they may find interest in
another direction; but I think with most of us—excepting when we are
very young and very inexperienced—the homing instinct is strong.

I have laid my battered brain on pillows in some of the largest hotels
in the world; but I have never known in any of them the peaceful rest
that is to be found in the cottage bedroom, despite its sloping roof.
I’m not saying that there is nothing whatever to disturb one there—all
too often Mr. and Mrs. Starling (several of them) persist in building
under the tiles just above my head, and the various families demand
breakfast at 3.30. Yet I even get to sleep through this.

There is one thing, however, that always wakes me and calls me in
a most peremptory manner to get up, and that is the return of the
swallows one morning in April or May, when the sites are being chosen
for the new nests under the eaves. It is such a sweet little chatter,
such a bubbling over of comment and advice and reminiscence, as they
get their first beakful of mud, and start to lay the foundation-stone
of the nest.

What do they say? I often wonder. They seem to talk the whole time,
and explain to each other the excellent residential qualities of their
various positions. One thing I am sure they say—and they twitter it
over and over again—I know they mean it, though I don’t understand
their language; for the homing instinct is strong in them, as it is in
all of Nature’s children; and as I listen to them in the early morning,
I can almost hear their words, “Isn’t it good to be here again?”




III

At the Sign of the Rosemary Bush


WHEN the cottage was originally built—about one hundred and thirty
years ago—it was probably just two rooms upstairs, one going out of the
other, and a kitchen and scullery downstairs. In the intervening years,
however, one owner has added on a couple of rooms on one side, and
another has put on two more and a pantry round the corner, and so on,
till it is difficult to say exactly what type of dwelling it really is.

There is a proper front door somewhere about the place, only no one
ever seems to find it; the path leading to it from the main gate
unobtrusively hides itself among the fir-trees, wandering round at the
rear of the house, and under some low apple-trees—of course, no one
who wasn’t familiar with the geography of the estate would think of
exploring such an out-of-the-way, narrow, grass-grown trail. No, they
would naturally follow along the irregularly-flagged broad path that is
kept by the handy man fairly free from weeds (except some little ferns
that will peep up at the edge, no matter what he does to them, and a
saucy white violet that has planted itself right in the very middle of
the walk and blooms vigorously).

Along this path most people go, whether they carry their best sunshade,
a bead bag and a silver card-case, or are merely delivering two
half-pounds of butter done up in dock leaves, and a cream-coloured duck
wrapped up in a coarse white tea-cloth with his liver tucked under
his wing, a big bunch of fresh sage stuck in his mouth—“and, please,
mother’s put in a couple o’ onions in case you didn’t happen to have
none.”

This broad path leads to a corner in the architectural conglomeration
where there are two doors at right angles—one moderately respectable
and one smaller and shabbier. If you carry a silver card-case, you
knock at the respectable-looking door—which promptly admits you into
the scullery: if you are merely someone anxious to dispose of a few
eggs or wanting to borrow a little flour, you knock more humbly at the
shabby door—to find you are battering at the coal-house.

Abigail deals with callers according to their status: the silver
card-cases are invited, in dulcet tones, to retrace their steps along
the broad path and take the narrow one to the front door. Sometimes
they do exactly as they are told; but more often, alas! they espy yet
another door, which they promptly make for, and this one precipitates
them right into the living-room and on top of me, no matter what I may
be doing.

Inside the cottage it is a similar jumble. You think you have found the
living-room all right, when you come in from the garden, only to pull
up in a large pantry, like a small room, with shelves full of delicious
mysteries in glass jars and jampots and pickle bottles.

You open a door in the living-room, thinking it is the one leading out
into the back hall, to find yourself confronted with a very steep and
narrow stone staircase, which is one way of getting upstairs! Of course
you get used to it all in a few days, and eventually cease to tumble
down over the odd step that is obligingly placed here and there in dark
spots, wherever the floor level changes in the halls or landings. But
to those who are not native-born it is a wee bit confusing at first.

       *       *       *       *       *

The living-room was originally the kitchen. It has a large fireplace
with an oven, and wide hobs whereon you can stand a kettle or anything
else you want to keep hot. It has a crane, too—only we daren’t cook our
dinner in a pot suspended from it, because I don’t want Abigail to give
notice. We have therefore to content ourselves with giving the crane an
occasional swing.

The mantelpiece—of oak that is black with age—has two shelves, the
upper one projecting beyond the lower, which has a frill of chintz
beneath. Higher up still there is an ancient rack for holding a couple
of guns, and there are cupboards on each side, also of black oak, that
must have been put there when the house was built.

But I think the thing that delights my heart above everything else in
this room is the huge dresser.

When you start with a room like this—I forgot to mention that there are
oak rafters, with hooks for home-fed hams—it is easy to make it cosy.
The big wooden settle keeps off draughts, some chairs that belonged to
my great-grandparents are far more comfortable than anything I could
buy nowadays, with the wood worn to that smooth polish that can only be
attained by generations of handling.

The oak dower chest is heavily carved, though its iron hinges and
locks suggest a prison door for solidity and size; still it is a handy
receptacle for the miscellaneous collection of MSS. and papers that
haunts me wherever I go!

I do not expect everybody to admire this style of room. There was one
caller (who came out of sheer curiosity) who, after gazing around the
living-room, with manifest disapproval, at last said, “You really could
make this into quite a nice little drawing-room if you had those old
rafters and beams done away with, and a proper ceiling put. Then you
could easily have a nice tiled modern stove in place of that dreadfully
old-fashioned fireplace, with those great hobs. And if you moved the
dresser into the kitchen, and——” So she went on, winding up with the
encouraging assurance, “And you would hardly know the place when you
had got it all done.”

With one voice we said we could quite believe it.

People so often fail to realise that both a country cottage decked out
in imitation of a town villa, and a town villa decked out in imitation
of a country cottage, are equally unsatisfying. In each case the fake
and insincerity of the schemes jar.

       *       *       *       *       *

If it isn’t bothering you too much, I should like you to look at
the ornaments—these, as much as anything else, give the room its
“unlikeness” to anything you see in the city. Here is a lovely fat
fish in a glass case among reeds and grasses. On the walls are antlers
of the fallow deer. Then there is a framed sampler, and likewise some
wonderful needlework of a bygone age when needlework was an art.

On the mantelpiece shelves are china cottages and castles, an old china
mill with a wonderful mill stream, on which are china ducks, each the
size of the mill-wheel! Then Red Riding Hood, in a little sprigged
pinafore, carrying a dear little basket, and patting affectionately
a most engaging, friendly-looking wolf, is always admired. Timothy’s
grandmother (a dignified-looking matron), teaching little Timothy out
of the Bible, is a relic from the days when Scriptural subjects were
among the ornaments found in most households. “Going to Market” and
“Returning from Market” are a choice pair of china subjects, showing
the lady riding behind her husband on a prancing steed that would do
credit to Rotten Row.

Mary and her little Lamb is one of the prettiest in the collection,
only she lost one of her arms over fifty years ago! There are various
cows and sheep (some with blue ribbons round the neck), and other
quaint china oddities.

Then there is a beautiful hen sitting on a most symmetrically woven
(china) straw nest packed full of eggs (each one, in proportion to the
hen, is the size of an ostrich egg). The hen (eggs and all) can be
lifted up, using her head, poor thing, as the handle, and then you find
she is the cover to an oval dish. I always intend—should any members of
our Royal Family get stranded on these hills, and drop in unexpectedly
to tea—to serve them with a poached egg in this identical dish.

And you must not overlook the shining brass candlesticks, some tall and
stately, some squat, with square trays and extinguishers, that have
been winking and glinting in the light for a century now—and are still
shining; nor the brass and horn lantern hanging from a beam. A lantern
is an absolute necessity on these rugged hills when there is no moon.

How friendly the old brass things are! Just look at the warming-pan
with its bright sun-face. I have no doubt modern radiators and
hot-water pipes are a boon to those who do not mind headaches and
dried-up air—but do they _look_ as warm and comforting as the gleaming
warming-pan?

That reminds me of the first time Abigail came down from London. She
looked at the warming-pan with interest, as she had never seen one
before. The weather was cold, and hot-water bottles were the order of
the night in town.

When I returned from an evening stroll with some guests, she met me
with an anxious face. “If you please, miss, will you kindly show me
how you keep the water inside that warming-pan? I can’t get it to stay
inside nohow when I start to lift it!”

       *       *       *       *       *

I wonder if you have ever seen a dresser like this one? The oak
shelves forming the upper part are built into a deep recess in the
wall, one above the other, up to the rafters, and all set back in the
thickness of the wall—and you can see how thick these walls are from
the window-ledge, which is fifteen inches deep. But they need to be
solid, for the winter storms that thrash across these hills show scant
consideration for present-day building methods; and a modern “bijou
bungalow” would probably be found scattered about the next parish, if
it ever lived long enough to get its roof on!

The dresser is closely hung with jugs and mugs and cups, willow-pattern
plates and dishes make a good deal of white and blue against the walls,
which are a full buttercup yellow, while a collection of ancient china
teapots, with some square willow-pattern vegetable dishes and a tall
Stilton cheese dish with two big sunflowers on it, occupy the wider
ledge at the bottom.

Here are some uncommon specimens of lustre jugs. This is a rare lustre
mug, brown with green bars outside, and a purple band inside. A lustre
pepper-box stands on one of the dresser ledges, and salt-cellars of
glass, so heavy as to suggest paper-weights.

Do you know the fascination of old English mugs? On this dresser
they range from a tiny mug in Rockingham ware, only an inch and a
half high, to noble things that suggest long draughts of home-made
herb beer! There are mugs with bunches of flowers on them, others
with conventional bands or designs, some with landscapes, some with
butterflies, some with words of wisdom to be imbibed by the youthful
along with the milk.

Jugs, again, are most alluring, once you get a mania for them! One of
my jugs is of brown earthenware, smothered with a raised design showing
a trailing grape-vine, with big bunches of grapes here and there. Two
other jugs that belonged to a bygone ancestress are apparently made of
a white stone wall, with the most natural-looking ivy creeping up it
and displaying bunches of berries. Jug-makers of the past gave so much
interest to their goods by reason of this raised work, instead of being
content to transfer a flat design as they do now. One white jug has
off-standing deer around it, grazing among trees. Another has a hunt in
full progress, horses and riders, dogs and all—though it always hurts
me to see the running hare.

A real, proper dresser is a useful bit of furniture, provided it
has plenty of hooks. It holds such a quantity of things. I have all
sorts of odd cups and saucers on mine, relics of past treasures that
have somehow survived the hand of the hired washer-up; little bits
that remind me of all sorts of pleasant things, such as tea-services
my mother had when I was little, some that have belonged to other
relatives.

In passing, I may say that a dresser of this sort is a great incentive
to good works. Many a relation, on looking at it, has said, “_I_ have
an old jug that belonged to your great, no, your great-great-aunt; I
shall give it to you, as you like things of that sort.”

Or another time it will be: “_What_ a collection of odd cups! Good
gracious, if a little thing like _that_ amuses you, I’ll turn out a lot
I have stored away somewhere, glad to get rid of them; it only annoys
me to look at them, as it reminds me how all the rest of the set got
smashed. You can have them and welcome.”

There has been a good deal of this sort of “give and take” about the
furnishing of this cottage. And it is so much more interesting to me
as the owner to know the history of the various items, than if I had
merely bought antiques by the houseful, as I have known some people do.
In the latter case, a room is so apt to look like nothing but an old
curiosity shop; as it is, the things all seem to “belong,” just as much
as we do.

       *       *       *       *       *

But I mustn’t weary you with a catalogue of household furnishings,
though I know, if you could actually _see_ the china and the little
bedrooms, with white, washable handwork everywhere, and wonderful old
patchwork and knitted quilts, you would love it all. The Bird room is
the general favourite, with its unique crochet; there are swallows
flying across the curtain-tops, swans sailing among bulrushes on the
washstand splash, wild geese flying above the tree-tops at another
window, ducks swimming sedately along towel-ends, more swallows (in
cross-stitch this time) on a table-cover, parrots (in darned filet)
on the dressing-table cloth, while seagulls float along a frieze, a
glass case of rare birds is over the mantelpiece, and a large wool-work
pheasant, balancing itself ingeniously on the top of a small basket of
grapes, and endeavouring to look as though it were quite its natural
habitat, is framed, and hangs on the wall. I don’t think the far-back
relative who worked it had much of an eye for proportion, however!

On the mantelpiece stands a sedate row of china fowls, a marble
fountain basin in the centre, with white pigeons basking around the
edge.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just one other room you must look into—the sitting-room, because I
want you to see my dolls’ things. Yes, I know it sounds imbecile, but
I never had a dolls’ house. When I was young, the rest of us were
brothers, and it wasn’t considered economical, therefore, to present
a toy that would only be serviceable to one out of the bunch. Besides
which, in those days children didn’t immediately get what they stamped
for. So I had to go without the thing I yearned for above all others.
But you may be sure I took care of what dolls’ things did chance to
come my way.

Dolls themselves were very scarce, but I had several sets of dolls’
tea-things, given by discerning aunts, and here they are, in a funny
old glass cupboard in the corner of the sitting-room. One is a very
small set, with teeny pink rosebuds on it; another is a larger set,
that my small friends drank tea out of (and occasionally smashed a cup
for me). There are two dinner services, one in plain white—a round soup
tureen, a gravy boat, a square vegetable dish, with some remaining
plates and dishes; the other a gorgeous affair, with Dickens scenes on
each plate—one dozen meat and six soup plates, with dishes and tureens
galore, and oh! such lovely china soup and sauce ladles, all _en suite_.

These dolls’ things seem to affect people in different ways. Some look
at them with eyes that go back to their own childhood, and memories
that recall similar treasures that they wanted when they, too, were
little, and did—or did not—get. Such people know exactly why I value
these things. They handle them lovingly, but don’t say much.

But there are others who gaze at the dolls’ china (and the little
wooden animals, and the glass slipper I was certain Cinderella wore,
and the china grand piano, and the dolls’ brass fender, and all the
other oddments), and then look at me in blank astonishment. It is
evidently incomprehensible to them that any sane woman, in these days
of strenuous intellectuality, can hoard such childish rubbish. And I am
powerless to explain my reasons.

Occasionally, however, light breaks across one of these amazed
countenances, and a woman will suddenly exclaim: “_I_ have part of a
dolls’ dinner service somewhere in the attic at home, I believe. I
shall get it out, and put it in _my_ china cabinet. It looks quite
smart, doesn’t it?”

To which I reply: “Yes; and I hear they are going to be _much_ worn
this season.”

       *       *       *       *       *

All the decorations in the house are on the most homely lines, one room
has each deep window-ledge filled with seashells and coral. If you want
silver boxes and cut-glass scent-bottles in the bedroom, you must bring
them yourself. _We_ think the wooden dressing-table looks all that
can be desired, clothed in a blue-glazed lining petticoat, with white
dotted muslin on top. And who could want a silver-backed hand-glass,
when they have the chance of using one that has its back encrusted with
small seashells!

There are plenty of pictures all over the house, many of them without
frames. Haulage is an expensive matter on these hills, and we always
take this into consideration. Several of the rooms have friezes made of
brown paper, to which have been affixed a series of coloured plates.
The charm of this arrangement is that you can take down the old frieze
and put up a new one—or stick a fresh picture over some old one—as
often as you please.

All pictures, however, show beautiful views of outdoor scenery:
heather-clad hills, flowering gardens, snow-covered peaks, and rolling
waves. Whether they are original paintings that famous artists have
given me, or plates from art magazines, they are all views of large
spaces, and induce big, restful thoughts.

Some cards that hang on the bedroom walls have been singled out again
and again by my friends for special commendation. I happened to see
them one day when I was going round the Book Saloon of the R.T.S. in
St. Paul’s Churchyard. One special favourite has these lines on it
(possibly you know them?):—

GOOD NIGHT.

    Sleep sweet within this quiet room,
      Oh thou! whoe’er thou art,
    And let no mournful yesterday
      Disturb thy peaceful heart;
    Nor let to-morrow scare thy rest
      With dreams of coming ill;
    Thy Maker is thy changeless friend,
      His love surrounds thee still.
    Forget thyself and all the world,
      Put out each feverish light;
    The stars are watching overhead,
      Sleep sweet, Good Night, Good Night.

Another, bought the same day, is entitled:—

A QUIET RESTING PLACE.

    And so I find it well to come
    For deeper rest to this still room;
    For here the habit of the soul
    Feels less the outer world’s control,
    And from the silence multiplied
    By these still forms on every side,
    The world that time and sense has known
    Falls off and leaves us God alone.

For the Flower room, Canon Langbridge’s delightful book, _Restful
Thoughts for Dusty Ways_, supplied me with a verse:—

HEAVEN COVERS ALL.

    When the world’s weight is on thy mind,
      And all its black-winged fears affright,
    Think how the daisy draws her blind,
      And sleeps without a light.

And for the Bird room, I have on the wall W. C. Bryant’s beautiful
poem, “Lines to a Waterfowl.” You will remember these verses:—

            There is a Power whose care
    Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
    The desert and illimitable air—
            Lone wandering, but not lost.

            He who, from zone to zone,
    Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
    In the long way that I must tread alone
            Will lead my steps aright.

On more than one occasion visitors have thanked me for having left them
these goodnight thoughts.

Of course, being a cottage in the midst of a flower-patch, we never run
short of flowers, and you find plenty indoors. When they are in bloom,
however, I always like to put a bunch of white moss rose-buds (one of
my favourite flowers) in a blue mug on a visitor’s dressing-table.

But whatever the flowers, it is our custom to welcome all guests with
rosemary, for I have discovered that the scent of it (even the sight
of it) is a certain cure for the divers maladies caused by overdoses
of unsatisfactory dressmakers, cooks who give notice every month,
much boredom in crowded unventilated drawing-rooms, and all the many
varieties of restlessness that have been invented to help women to kill
time. It has also been known to prove efficacious in cases of people
prone to overwork.

At any rate, if you come to visit me you will find a vase with sprigs
of rosemary on the deep window-ledge in your room; and few of my
friends go away without taking a slip from the gnarled bush by the door
to plant in less congenial surroundings.

I believe Shakespeare said that rosemary typifies remembrance; Virginia
unblushingly improves on Shakespeare by insisting that it means the
remembrance of peace.




IV

Miss Quirker—Incidentally


EVERY visit to the cottage seems prefaced with a scramble. Either the
work at the office suddenly does itself up in a tangle, or the domestic
arrangements show signs of incipient paralysis, which it takes all my
available energy to avert, or else it is people who inflict themselves
upon me when I’m at my final gasp without a moment, or a single company
smile, to spare for anybody. And of all the three forms of irritation,
the uninvited people are the worst; for they always seem to absorb the
last bit of vitality left me, which I had hoped would just carry me
over the journey.

There is Miss Quirker, for instance. You don’t know Miss Quirker? How I
envy you!

I can best describe her as a lady well over forty (or more), who
apparently hasn’t anything at all to do, and who does it thoroughly
well. She has a couple of very decided and conspicuous gifts—one is the
ability to waste the time and dissipate the amiable qualities of every
individual whose path she crosses; and the other is a positive genius
for saying the wrong thing.

I was near the window writing for all I was worth, when she knocked at
the door and inquired for me, adding, “I see she is busy writing, but
if you tell her who it is, I know she’ll see _me_.” Of course I had to
see her.

She entered the room with a kittenish little rush and scuffle, that is
by no means the happiest form of affectation for a tall, largely-built
woman, well over forty (or more).

“Ah! I’ve found you in at last” (with a roguish wag of a stiff finger
in a size too small glove). “I was determined to see you, dear, though
Abigail always looks so forbidding at the door. I met Miss Virginia
shopping just now, and I asked if you were at home. She said you were
_frightfully_ busy, nearly off your head with work, as you were leaving
town the first thing in the morning. So I said at once: Then of course
I must go round and call on her this very afternoon.

“She said she wasn’t sure that you’d be in if I did, but I said I
should chance it—it’s such an age since we’ve met—why, not since your
engagement was announced! Now, just give me an account of yourself, and
tell me all about everything.

“I would have asked Miss Virginia, but I never think she is at all
cordial, or perhaps I should say—sympathetic. Indeed, I don’t think she
really knew me at first. I was right in her path, yet she seemed to
look through me! But I took a seat next to her at the lace counter,
and spoke to her. By the way, is she deaf? It was so strange that she
didn’t seem to hear a quarter of the questions I asked her about you,
so I really got next to _no_ information from her. It was so funny
sometimes that I almost laughed—I’ve _such_ a sense of humour, you
know. For instance, when I asked her what she thought of your _fiancé_
(you know you’ve never introduced me to him yet!) and was it her idea
of a suitable match, and was he tall or short, she replied: ‘I think
it wonderful value considering, and it should wear well; the size is
five yards round, so I had better have six yards to allow for corners.’
And, do you know, I was some minutes before I realised that she wasn’t
talking about his waist measure, but an afternoon tea-cloth for which
she was buying the lace. She evidently hadn’t heard a word I had said.
And so I raised my voice and asked her what part he had come from, as I
knew he didn’t go to _our_ church. She just looked at me and replied:
‘Cluny; I always think Cluny lace washes so well, don’t you?’

“You see, I got absolutely _nothing_ out of her. In fact, I wondered,
dear, whether—of course, I know you don’t mind me speaking quite
frankly—whether there had been any little rift—er—you understand; of
course I know you’ve a wonderful fund of patience, only those two girls
always seem to be with you, and though I’m sure you wouldn’t tell them
so, yet anyone with the very _slightest_ tact might see that they
aren’t wanted. And of course....

“Oh, well, I’m glad to hear you _do_ think as much of them as ever. I
shouldn’t have thought it; but you needn’t mind telling _me_ if there
_had_ been a little coolness. I’m fairly sharp at seeing through a
stone wall. And I always have said that—personally, mind you—I never
knew two girls less....

“Of course, we won’t discuss them if you’d rather not. As you know, I
am the very last one to want to introduce a disagreeable topic. We’ll
talk about you. Turn round to the light, and let me see how you are
looking. My _dear_! but you do look ill!! I don’t know _when_ I’ve seen
you look so utterly washed out and anæmic....

“You never felt better in your life? Well, I’m glad to hear it, I’m
sure. Oh, I see what it is, it’s that blue dress you are wearing that
gives you that aged and sallow look—a very trying colour, isn’t it? I
don’t think anyone ought to wear that colour, but those with very clear
young-looking complexions, and then it looks charming. It always suited
me. By the way, did Madame Delphine make that dress?... I thought so, I
knew it the minute I saw you. It’s a queer thing, but I have never yet
seen anyone look even passable in a dress that she has made. You can’t
exactly say that it doesn’t fit, can you? It’s a something—I don’t
know how to express it—about her gowns that always strikes me as—well,
you know what I mean, don’t you? And that dress you’ve got on looks
just like that! I know you won’t mind _me_ speaking quite plainly;
you see, I’ve known you for so long, and I’m not one to flatter, I
never was. What we need in this world is absolute sincerity; don’t you
agree with me? And I always think it’s the kindest thing when you see
a friend in anything that makes her look plainer than ever, to tell
her so at once, then she knows just exactly what she looks like. And,
after all, other people are the best judges as to what suits us. We
can’t see ourselves. Mrs. Ridley was saying at the Guild ‘At Home’ at
the Archdeacon’s the other day, she thought you were so wise to stick
to that way you do your hair; she said she thought it suited you,
considering that....”

Here I did manage to interpolate a sarcastic regret that they couldn’t
find a more interesting topic of conversation!

“Oh, yes, we _had_ other more interesting things to talk about, dear,
but Mrs. Archdeacon had your photo on the table, and the Archdeacon
said something about you, I forget what—nothing of any importance—and
that was the only reason we mentioned you. I said I thought perhaps you
did it that way because it was a little thin just there.... Oh, I know
you used to have a lot of hair, dear; but some people’s hair _does_
come out, and a pad doesn’t look so well anywhere else....

“It’s all your own hair? You don’t wear—— Well, I _am_ surprised! I
should _never_ have thought it!! I don’t mean that it looks much in any
case, but I always concluded that you wore——

“Oh, how delightful! I’ll confess I was longing for a cup of tea....
Yes, three lumps and plenty of milk. I always say it makes up for any
deficiencies in the tea, if one has lots of milk.... China tea, is it?
I thought so. I dare say it’s all right for those who like it. And, of
course, if you tell people what it is, they understand why it _looks_
so poor....

“On _no_ account; don’t _think_ of having some Indian tea made
specially for me. I can quite well make this do, because I’m going
straight home after I leave you, and tea will be waiting for me, and I
shall have a _good_ cup first thing....

“Yes, I think I will have another sandwich, even though it is the third
time of asking. These make me think of the Guild ‘At Home’ last week.
You ought to have been there. The Archdeacon makes such a delightful
host _and_ the sandwiches!—well, I can’t _tell_ you what they were
like; literally hundreds and hundreds of them, and such delicious
filling; all cut in their own kitchen, too. You really should get Mrs.
Archdeacon to tell you what her cook put in them; you’d never touch one
of these ordinary ones again, once you had tasted hers.

“But what I _would_ like to know is, what does she do with all the
crusts? Mrs. Ridley thought that perhaps they made them up into savoury
puddings; only, as I said to her: How about those with fish in them?
She said that perhaps they kept them separate when cutting; but I know
the shuffling ways of cooks better than that! I never kept one, and I
never will....

“I must certainly try the cake if you made it yourself. I seldom get
time to do any cooking myself, though I’m a very good hand at cakes.
But you’ve secretaries to take everything off your hands; you must have
lots of spare time.”

(A moment’s pause while she tries the cake.)

“Have you ever used the Busy Bee Flour Sifter? No? Then I should
strongly advise you to get one. I should think _that_ might help you to
make a lighter cake; or do you think you put in enough baking powder?
But there, some people have a light hand with cakes, and some haven’t.
I don’t think anything makes any difference if you haven’t. It’s just
like plants, isn’t it—they always grow well for those who love them.
_Your_ ferns aren’t looking very bright, are they?...

“Oh, don’t you like the ends of the fronds rubbed?... I see, they
were given you by your _fiancé_, and naturally they are the apple of
your eye. That reminds me, you haven’t shown me his portrait yet. I’m
longing to see it....

“Is _that_ the gentleman! Well! he’s the very last man in the world I
should have chosen for you! Not a bit like what I pictured....

“No, I don’t mean that there’s anything _wrong_ with him, only—er—he
doesn’t look a scrap like the man _you_ would become engaged to....

“Well, I don’t know that I can exactly describe the type of man I
expected. I thought he would be tall and——

“He is? Over six feet? Well, he doesn’t look it from his photo, does
he?...

“That’s true; a vignetted head doesn’t show the full height. But apart
from that, I expected an artistic sort of man....

“He is? Really! And then I should have pictured him rather—er—well,
Napoleonic, and with that far-away poetic fire in his eyes that carries
you off your feet to untold heights....

“No, of course I don’t mean an aviator! I mean a—but it isn’t easy to
put it into words; only you can’t think how disap—how surprised I am to
see a little man....

“Of course, I remember you did say he was tall and well made. But
there, handsome is as handsome does; and, after all, I’ve heard that
it is often the plainest and most uninteresting-looking men that turn
out the best in the end. I can only hope that it will be so in your——

“Why, I declare! Here’s Miss Virginia! How d’y’do? We’ve been talking
about you all the afternoon. Well, I really _must_ be going, and I
simply won’t listen to any of your persuasions to stay longer. I’ve
brightened her up nicely, Miss Virginia; she was looking ever so gloomy
when I called. Good-bye, dear. _Good_-bye, Miss Virginia.”

    _Exit Miss Quirker._

What we said after she had gone had better not be recorded! My own
remarks may not have been _quite_ cordial; but I know that Virginia’s
were even worse—if that were possible.

       *       *       *       *       *

But though visitations such as these, when bestowed upon me at the
eleventh hour, always reduce me mentally to a sort of bran-mash (and
Virginia says she can’t see why anybody need bother a government to
_import_ pulp nowadays, considering the state of her brain, to say
nothing of those of other people who shall be nameless), the sight of
the garden makes me human once more, and by sunset the silence of the
hills has so restored my soul, that the sun seldom, if ever, goes down
upon my wrath.

After tea, there will probably be two hours of daylight for watering
the garden. Even though the sun has dropped behind the opposite hills,
it is light up here on the hill-top long after the valley has gone to
sleep; and when the sun has really set, there is a long and lovely
twilight.

Indoors and out there is absolute peace. The grandfather’s clock ticks
with that slow deliberation that is so soothing; even the preliminary
rumble it gives before striking is never irritating—you feel it is a
concession due to advanced age.

Through the open window float in the scents of thousands of flowers
that are feeling unspeakably grateful for the liberal watering the
girls have been giving them; you cannot distinguish any one in
particular; one moment you think it is the sweet briar, then you are
sure it is the white lilies, then the breeze brings the breath of the
honeysuckles that are climbing trees and hedges, till the whole air is
laden with perfume.

Up the garden white dresses are seen among the borders.

“There, I believe we’ve done everything but that upper bed of
hollyhocks, and they won’t hurt for to-night.” Virginia sounds as
though she had been working hard.

“Now the tent,” calls out Ursula. And we all make a stampede to the
bottom of the lower orchard, and with a few dexterous turns the tent
is down and folded up; for though the trees may be motionless now,
the wind springs up at any moment on these hills, and once you hear
it soughing in the tops of the big fir-trees in the garden you will
realise the advantage of having the tent indoors!

As you saunter up the garden, back to the house, crushing the
sweet-odoured black peppermint in the grass underfoot, the stars
seem very near. The cottage looks like a toy, with the light shining
from each little window. And as you cross the threshold into the
living-room, the log fire flashes and gleams (a fire is acceptable up
here after sundown, even in the summer), and everything smiles with
such a cosy welcome, till brass candlesticks and cups and jugs and the
homely willow patterns on the dresser, all seem to say, “We are so glad
you’ve come.”




V

The Geography of the Flower-Patch


THE first night at this cottage you may lie awake, if you are a
stranger to these hills, almost awed by the silence. Gradually you
realise that the silence is not actual absence of sound. In May and
early June the nightingales trill in the trees around; or you will hear
the owls calling to one another in the woods—a trifle weird if you do
not know what it is. At another time it is the corn-crake; or the wind
brings you the bleating of lambs down in the valley. As you listen
longer, you hear the tinkle, tinkle of the little spring that tumbles
out of a small spout into a ferny well outside the garden gate.

You take a final look out of the window to where, miles away in the
distance, a lighthouse flashes at fixed intervals. It seems strangely
companionable, even though it is so far off. And then you close your
eyes—unconscious that you have fallen asleep—only to open them again in
a minute, as you think. Someone is speaking.

You detect Ursula’s voice in a stage whisper through the keyhole.

“I say—aren’t you ever going to get up?”

You rub your eyes. It certainly is morning! And you such a poor
sleeper, possibly one of those who “never had a wink of sleep all
night, and such horrid dreams.” The plaintive voice continues at the
keyhole:

“I planted out nine hundred and thirty-seven wallflower seedlings
yesterday, and I want to cover them up with fern before the sun gets
too strong. If you’ll get up you can gather the bracken, while I creep
around on all fours covering them up. See? Virginia is busy thinning
out the turnips. And SHE is never any good at getting up early, you
know!”

I regret to say this last scornful reference is to me!

       *       *       *       *       *

And now when you look out of the little bedroom window again, to the
accompaniment of an early cup of tea, what a change has taken place
since yesterday! Last night the ranges of opposite hills, with the sun
setting behind them, looked vague and mysterious with shadows. This
morning the sun is full on them, but now there is another mystery—or so
it seems to those who see it for the first time.

Instead of looking down into the green tree-clad valley to where the
river winds along at the base of the steep hills, you now look down
on to a bank of solid white—the mist that rises up at night and fills
the lower part of the valley, reminding one of the mist that went up
from the earth in the first Garden, “and watered the whole face of the
ground.”

With the sun on it, the mist gives back a dazzling light. And then
slowly, slowly, the whole white bank in the valley lifts silently and
wonderfully; up and up it goes in a solid mass, and as the higher
parts of the hills, which were previously in sunshine, are temporarily
hidden by the uprising mass, so the lower part of the valley gradually
becomes visible, first only a strip at the very bottom, then more and
more as the white curtain is raised. Finally the white mass disappears
and joins its fellows in the sky above, a fragment of cloud lingering
sometimes a little below the summit of the highest hill. If the day is
going to be fine, this last trail of silvery cloud disappears, and then
the sun lights up the woods and the upland meadows, showing you distant
cottages and far-off farmhouses where you saw nothing but tremulous
shadows the night before.

However often one looks upon this sight, the marvel never lessens,
and the “simple scientific explanation,” which every learned person
who visits this cottage pours over the breakfast-table, is quite
unnecessary. Scientific explanations are admirable for cities, but when
we set foot on these hills, it is just sufficient for us that Nature
“is.”

       *       *       *       *       *

One drawback about this cottage is the fact that one’s poetic thoughts
and soulful dreams are constantly being interrupted by things
material, more especially those appertaining to food! And even as
you are gazing out of the window at the glorious scenery all around
you, there arises the odour of frizzling ham (that originally ran
about, uncooked, in a field lower down), fried potatoes (the good
old-fashioned sort done in the frying-pan), coffee, and other hungry
things; and you find to your surprise that a substantial breakfast is
on the table by eight o’clock, though (and this is where guests bless
their hostess) no one need get up to breakfast, if they prefer to have
it in bed, for very tired people come here sometimes.

But it does not matter what nervous wrecks Virginia and Ursula may
have landed at the door overnight, the first morning sees them up with
the lark and out gardening; and one of the earliest sounds you hear
is the clink of the brown pitcher on the stones, as Virginia sets it
down after filling it at the little spring outside the garden gate.
This is a thirsty garden; it is everywhere on the slope, remember,
and is composed of the lightest soil imaginable with rock everywhere
beneath. As fast as you put water on it, it runs away downhill; hence,
a moment’s leisure, morning or evening, always means some pitchers of
water for the garden.

All the cottages on the hillside seem to have been built in the same
way. Someone evidently hunted about for a few feet of land where
it was slightly less sloping than the rest, and within reach of a
spring of water, and this plot he levelled a bit by excavating the big
boulders and smaller stones which make up our substratum, and often the
top-stratum too. Then if the piece of land wasn’t quite large enough,
he cut away part of the hill behind, banking it up with some of the
biggest of the boulders, to keep it from tumbling down on to the piece
he had cleared.

Next he excavated more rocky pieces from the up-and-down land around
his clearing; this gave him a bit of clean ground for a garden, and
also provided him with enough stone to build his habitation. Any stone
he might have over he made into a wall around his plot, by the simple
process of piling one piece on top of another. That, apparently, is all
man does to the place. Then Nature sets to work; and, oh, what festoons
of loveliness she flings over all!

As several different owners have had a hand at my particular cottage,
the garden has been extended in various directions, but always
requiring stone walls to prop it up. Hence you get a moderately level
patch, with a drop of four or six feet over the edge of the garden-bed.

A few rough stone steps take you down to the next level, where there
is another bit of garden, the steps themselves sprouting in every
chink, with wild strawberry, primroses, ferns, columbines, and a stray
Canterbury bell. In this way the cottage is surrounded with steps going
up or going down, with a flower-bed running along here, and some more
a few feet lower down; another terrace of flowers and some more steps
(nearly smothered with big periwinkle, these are) take you down to an
absurd lawn, that some enterprising person levelled up so delightfully
on the tilt that neither chair nor table will remain where you place
it! If they roll far enough, they go over the edge of the lawn, a drop
of about twenty feet, into the lower orchard! Nevertheless, this lawn
is popular, because it is edged at one side with white and pink moss
rose-trees.

Thus perhaps you can picture it—big beds and little beds, some running
one way, some spreading out in another direction; sometimes large
patches where flowers grow by the quarter-acre; sometimes little scraps
and corners no bigger than a hearth-rug, where we managed to dig out
some more stones, and make a further bit of clearing. But everywhere
you go there are the big plateaux or little terraces supported by
massive grey stone walls, which vary from two to twenty feet in height,
according to the amount of hillside they are required to prop up.

And how these walls bloom! Ivy and moss and ferns seem to love them,
for all the local walls sprout ferns without any apparent provocation,
and the walls about this garden are no exception.

But, in addition, white arabis hangs over in cascades, in
the spring, and you see then why the country people call it
“Snow-on-the-Mountains”; and mingling with the white is the exquisite
mauve variety; wallflowers of lovely colouring, rose pink, deep
purple, pale primrose, bright orange, as well as the richly-streaked
brown-and-yellow flowers, bloom gaily on the rocky ledges; snapdragons
flower later, with nasturtiums, and even some blue-eyed forget-me-nots
have sown themselves up there, and bloom with the rest. Honesty plants
have established themselves in the crevices; masses of wild Herb Robert
have been allowed to remain; and carpeting everything are all manner
of sedums, and Alpine and ice plants, some with grey-green foliage and
ruby-coloured stems, some with white flowers, some with crimson; and in
the hottest places there are clumps of houseleeks looking sturdy and
homely.

Certain weeks in the year the tops of some of the walls are a golden
mass when the yellow stonecrop is in bloom; but whatever the season,
there is always something to look at—something holding up a brave head
and preaching as loudly as ever a plant can preach of the advantages of
making the best of your surroundings.

Does the wall face a sunless north? Very well; out come the ferns and
up creeps the ivy; the Rock Stonecrop, with its blue-green stems and
leaves (looking almost like a huge moss) fills every shady spot it can
find, seemingly appearing from nowhere.

Is the wall sunny? All right; the wallflowers laugh at you, pinks climb
over the top edge, just to see what is going on down below; one baking
spot supports a mass of sage about a yard and a half in diameter, a
smother of blue flowers in the summer; no one planted it, it just came!
A red ribis has hooked itself in at one spot; what it lives on I don’t
know; while white, mauve and purple Honesty seeds itself everywhere,
making a brave show of colour in the spring. In fact, white and mauve
are the prevailing colours on the walls in April.

Later on you may expect—and will find—anything; for annuals and
bi-annuals seed themselves, continually dropping the seed to a lower
level; hence there is always a self-planted garden bed at the base of
each wall, reminiscent of what was growing above the season before.

On the shady side of one wall, we have made a moss garden—it was
Virginia’s idea, and she takes a very special pride in it, adding
new sorts whenever she finds them. Hence you will sometimes find her
coming home from a ramble, carrying a huge stone with her, or lugging
along a veritable boulder. In this way she brings the moss home,
local habitation and all, annexing any stone she sees (a wild stone,
of course, not a tame one from someone’s garden wall) that bears a
promising crop of some new variety.

As a result, she fairly bulges with pride whenever she exhibits
the moss garden, and explains how much of it is her own particular
handiwork.

We have not yet settled whether she ought to pay me rent for my wall
that she uses for her moss garden, or I ought to pay her wages for
moss-gardening my wall.

One characteristic of this garden is an ever-changing show of colour.
It varies according to the season, but whatever the time of year there
are usually gorgeous splashes of colour that make you stand and wonder.

Do not forget that this is only a cottage garden, even though it is
a roomy one. I hope you are not picturing to yourself an orthodox
country-house garden, with expanses of well-kept lawns, with
proper-looking beds of geraniums, and lordly pampas grass at intervals,
and well-groomed rose-bushes in tidy beds, and correct herbaceous
borders, and beds of begonias and heliotropes planted out from the
greenhouses, and all the other nice-mannered, polite flowers that every
well-paid, certificated gardener conscientiously insists on planting in
exactly the same way all the country over.

This garden grows a little of everything, and a great deal of
some things, and when you look at it you might easily imagine that
everything had planted itself just where it pleased. The garden is
not tidy, for the things are constantly growing over each other, and
then out across the paths. Moreover, it lacks someone there all the
time to keep it tidy; the ministrations of the handy man are decidedly
erratic. But at least it is bright, always bright, and you can pick as
many flowers as you please—handfuls, armfuls, apronfuls—with no fear of
an autocratic gardener glaring at you; and the flowers will never be
missed.

In the spring wallflowers predominate, every colour that the modern
varieties produce. Ursula’s remark that she had planted over nine
hundred seedlings was well within the mark. A thousand or two of
wallflower seedlings do not go very far in this garden, because at one
time of the year the place appears to be a waving mass of wallflowers
from end to end.

And have you any idea what the scent is like when you have thousands of
wallflowers smiling on a sunny spring morning?

But there are all sorts of oddments, some things you do not expect and
some things you do. The cowslip bed is very pretty. Here are yellow,
orange, copper-coloured and mahogany brown cowslips; pale-coloured
oxlips, and polyanthuses in as many shades as the wallflowers, from
rosy red to dark purple-brown with every petal edged with bright yellow
as though they had been buttonholed round.

There is no need to cultivate primroses in the garden beds, for
the two orchards are thick with them; where there are also large
patches of wild snowdrops with crowds of wild daffodils, and dancing
wind-flowers—or wood anemones; while tall spikes of the pale mauve
spotted orchises grow in the grass around the edge near the walls.

Before the wallflowers have finished flowering the tulips are out,
the old-fashioned “cottage tulips,” many of them, tall and with large
cup-like flowers—pink and crimson, brown and yellow, showy “parrots,”
and delicate mauve feathered with white, purple-black, deep maroon;
such a brilliant army those tulips make, with hundreds of them in bloom
at once.

Before the tulip petals have fallen, the peonies have opened out great
heavy heads of flowers that can’t keep upright. The scarlet oriental
poppies with their blue-black centres make masses of colour that have
to be kept very much to themselves or they kill every other flower
within reach; these are therefore planted near the clumps of white
irises, and the deep blue and pure white perennial lupins, that make a
beautiful show all down one border.

Speaking of lupins reminds me of the tree-lupins. Virginia brought some
harmless-looking little plants with her one year, remembering my love
for lupins.

“These are tree-lupins,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t know what they
will grow into, but the man said they were just like lupins, only much
more so; therefore I bought them. Don’t blame _me_ if they die.”

She planted them comfortably and cosily in a bed along with white
foxgloves and pink pentstemons, all the members of this happy family
looking about the same size.

The following year when Virginia visited the cottage she asked, “Where
are my tree-lupins?” She was shown great bushes each the size of a
round dining-table, and each holding aloft hundreds of yellow spikes,
and filling the air with the scent of a bean-field. There were the
tree-lupins all right! But where were the foxgloves and pentstemons?

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps you think there must be large, dull spaces when the wallflowers
cease blooming, but in between the wallflower plants are others coming
on, and by the time the wallflowers have finished—and are ready to be
pulled up—these beds are filling with sweet williams and snapdragons.
The young plants were there, and they come into bloom as the
wallflowers finish. And then, where only a short time before there were
beds all purples and yellows and browns, you have now reds and pinks
and every shade of rosy tint that the bright eyes of the sweet williams
can produce.

The snapdragons once played a joke on the garden. I was ordering some
seeds from Sutton’s, and said, “I want some very hardy snapdragons,
that will stand being planted in the windiest part of the garden where
nothing of any height will grow.” The seeds were guaranteed to grow in
the most uprooting of hurricanes.

In due time the seedlings appeared above ground, and Ursula devoted
several back-aching evenings to planting them out into the windswept
beds. By the middle of the following summer those jaunty snapdragons
had each grown six feet high, and there, waving in that exposed place,
where any well-conducted plant would have sternly refused to grow more
than a foot high, was a plantation of great flowers, each tied to a
stout stake like hollyhocks, and the blooms seemed to have outgrown
their normal size just as the rest of the plants had done.

Of course, people came from ever so far to gaze at these snapdragons;
and unbelievers surreptitiously pulled out tape-measures and two-foot
rules, and one and all, after meditating seriously on the subject, and
looking at it from all points of view, would finally shake their heads
and say, “Well, I’ll just tell you what it is—the place evidently
suits them.” We never got any further than that!

By every law and reason known to properly-trained gardeners and
horticulturists, this garden ought to be able to produce nothing but
low-growing flowers and shrubs. Every local resident kindly volunteered
this information directly he or she set eyes on the cottage; they said
it was too high up, too bleak in winter, too exposed, too dry, too
rocky, or too glaringly sunny—for anything above six inches high to
have a chance in it.

And yet Nature goes on laughing at the pessimists, and so do those who
tend this flower-patch. And the columbines, yellow, pink, pale blue,
purple, and white, send up tall heads of flower. The coreopsis plants
grow so big and bushy they have to be staked. The cornflowers, a streak
of blue at the end of the cabbage bed, are taller than the broad beans
adjoining. Then there are the hollyhocks and the larkspurs—these hold
their heads as high as anyone could desire, and the tall red salvias
are not far behind. The foxgloves are also a brave sight (though
I do not include in this category those that are buried under the
tree-lupins!).

Of course, there are low-growing things in the garden as well as the
more lofty-minded. There is one bed that is a ramping mass of giant
mimulus of various colours. Convolvulus minor spreads about the ground
in one of the white lily beds; and eschscholtzias cover the earth for
another row of lilies. Pansies rove about at their own sweet will in
this garden, and the old-fashioned white pinks and the pink variety
spread themselves out over the big stones that edge the borders.

The mignonette bed has a row of lavenders at the side, and mounds of
nasturtiums grow where the earth is too rocky and barren to support
anything else.

Naturally, there are hedges of sweet peas; sometimes they are heavy
with flowers, sometimes the slugs or birds settle the matter at the
beginning of the season. One hedge runs along at the back of the herb
garden, and the herbs have so spread themselves out that the sweet peas
were getting swamped. Virginia has been cutting them back.

Do you know what the scent of cut herbs is like on a hot summer day,
with sweet peas in the background? In this herb garden there is sage,
with its lovely blue flowers, lemon thyme, silver thyme, savory,
hyssop, lavender, rosemary, rue, balm, marjoram, black peppermint,
spearmint and parsley.

In this bed also grows the old-time bergamot, with its heavily-scented
leaves and lovely tufts of crimson flowers.

But though one part of the garden is set apart for herbs and another
for vegetables, you must not imagine that they are only to be found
there. Fine clumps of parsley have planted themselves in among the
annual larkspurs; mint persists in running riot among the pink and
white mallows (but the mint family never remains quietly at home);
a sturdy scarlet runner comes up, year after year, beside a great
bush of gum cistus, which makes me think it might be treated as a
perennial; it seems impossible to get the artichokes to part company
with the Michaelmas daisies, while raspberry canes shoot up among
the old-fashioned red fuchsia bushes; radishes are flourishing like
the green bay-tree underneath the sweetbriar; a regiment of pickling
onions is living on most neighbourly terms with a row of cup-and-saucer
Canterbury bells; and as for rhubarb—well, what can you expect when one
man, whom I employed for a brief spell, remarked:

“You’ll see where I’ve put in that thur special rubbub, miss, because
I’ve planted a traveller’s joy a-top of he to mark the spot.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Cupid’s Border is another section of this garden that may interest you.
Here you naturally find Love-in-a-mist and Love-lies-bleeding. The
flowers which the country folks call Love-lockets dangle pink and white
from their graceful curving stems; (alas, in catalogues and places
where they know, this plant is merely regarded as dielytra). In this
border you of course find forget-me-nots “that grow for happy lovers”;
bachelor’s buttons, too, hold up their heads in a very sprightly
manner, and please notice that they are getting nearer and nearer to
the clump of Sweet Betsy. But the bachelor’s buttons have a rival, for
the other side of Sweet Betsy stands lad’s love—and though not so showy
as the bachelor’s buttons, lad’s love claims to be of more solid worth.
I leave them to settle the matter between themselves, however; I’m not
one to interfere in such affairs.

At the other side of the border stands a maiden’s blush rose, and
gallantly waving beside it is a clump of Prince’s Feather (sometimes
referred to in common parlance as “they laylock bushes”). At the
edge of the border you naturally find heartsease, not the stiff,
over-developed article of modern flower-shows, but the old-fashioned
sort, all streaks and splashes of rich purple and yellow.

There is no time now to go round the vegetable garden—not that this
can be regarded as an entirely separate part of the estate, for the
vegetables have got mixed up in a terribly haphazard way with the rest
of things, as I hinted just now. The potato-plot, for instance, has a
border of golden wallflowers all round and double daisies at the edge,
with a row of giant sunflowers, hollyhocks, and clumps of honesty at
the back.

This mixture is partly in the nature of a compromise. The gentleman
who wields the spade has to be taken into account. No matter who
he is, no matter how often he discharges me and I have to beg yet
someone else to “oblige” me, it is always the same, the tiller of
the soil regards space given over to flowers as a grievous waste,
not to say an indication of feeble-mindedness! Therefore he inserts
a row of vegetables or seeds whenever I happen to have cleared out
some flowering plants and left a morsel of space _pro tem._ It seems
a prevailing idea among the non-qualified working classes, in rural
districts, that the cultivation of flowers ranks about on a level with
doing the washing—work derogatory to a man and only fit for women!

To the credit of the handy man I must say that on one occasion he did
kindly present me with a load of pig manure. He put it on the flower
garden the day before we arrived, as a pleasant surprise, which it
certainly was! Next day we all had relatives with broken legs, who
needed our immediate return to town.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nevertheless the vegetables play their part, and assume no small
importance, in due course; for it is another unwritten law of this
cottage that visitors shall go out and select the day’s vegetables,
and cut them with the dew on; of course, if they are superlatively
lazy, they can meanly get some early riser to do it for them; also they
can confer together, or each can gather her own choice.

Hence you will see Virginia or Ursula in a large hat that is all
brim, with basket on arm, and wearing an apron (not a lacy, frilly
muslin thing, but a good-sized, well-made, old-fashioned lilac print
apron), going up the garden and gathering broad beans, cutting young
cauliflowers, or “curly greens,” or turnip tops, or a marrow, forking
up potatoes, pulling carrots, collecting lettuces, spring onions, cress
and other salading—all according to the season.

And if it should chance that you have never yourself put on a big
apron, and cut your own vegetables before the dew is off them, then
Virginia will be truly sorry for you.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is plenty of time to be lazy, however; and a hot summer day means
long leisure in this garden; for when the sun is high the brown pitcher
rests (though the brown teapot does not) until the fir-trees throw
shadows from the west.

All day you can sit in the shade at the bottom of the garden, looking
up the hill at the wonderful mass of colour before you. Along the ridge
of the cottage roof perches a row of swallows, chirping and chattering
in their usual way. The starlings, who have built under the tiles,
are ordering their respective families to cease clamouring for more,
explaining that hunting caterpillars is hot work. Most other birds are
quiet when the sun is fiercest, but over all the garden there is the
hum, hum of thousands of industrious bees, while literally hundreds of
white butterflies keep up a perpetual flutter over the tall blue spikes
of bloom on the lavender bushes.

Even the small white dog with the brown ears ceases to tear about the
garden, and bark at nothing in a consequential way; he just lies down
on the edge of somebody’s dress, and hangs out a little pink tongue for
air.

This is the time when the flower-patch among the hills spells REST.

An old woman passing up the lane a few nights ago paused at the gate.
“How them pinnies do blow, miss!” she said, gazing admiringly at a
clump of peonies. Then she added—

“Ain’t it strange, now, that it do take a woman to make a flower
garden? A man ain’t no good at that; he simply can’t help hisself
a-running to veg’tables!”

But after thinking this over, and despite all that strong-minded
womankind tells me to the contrary, I cannot really believe that there
is such total depravity in the other sex!




VI

That Jane Price!


WHEN Abigail announced, “Mrs. Price says can you spare a minute to see
her, please, ma’am,” you would have known by the toss of her nose that
the lady-caller was not very _nearly_ related to the aristocracy.

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Price, or “that Jane Price,” as she is
more usually styled, is held in no great esteem in our village. Yet
everything is said to fulfil some useful purpose, and if Mrs. Price
does nothing else, at least she and her family serve as conspicuous
moral warnings and give us something to throw up our hands about at
intervals, when we exclaim:

“_Did_ you EVER!!”

She is a widow of ample and well-fed proportions, owning her cottage,
some bees and a pig, and apparently getting a fairly good living out of
doing remarkably little sewing. If, under a mistaken sense of duty, you
strive to encourage local industry, and seek to engage her services,
she has to consider before she consents to undertake the bit of sewing
you offer her to do, at three times the amount you would have to pay
for having it done in town. And as often as not she replies that she
“really _can’t_ oblige you” this time, as she’s got a “spell” on cruel
bad, that has gone all down her back to her knees, making her head
feel nohow.

You turn away not even worried about her condition, since she seems as
cheerful as a daisy and as comfortably complacent as a cow. And you
also know, even though you may have been acquainted with the lady only
a few months, that however cruel the spell may be, and however long it
may last and prevent her working, her children will be some of the most
elaborately dressed in the Sunday school, and from the cottage door
there will radiate the most appetising of odours as regularly as the
mealtimes come round.

How it is that she manages to do so well with so little visible means
of subsistence, only a stranger would stop to inquire. The residents
know only too well that her pockets are large; that the shawl she
invariably wears on weekdays has voluminous folds; that her carrying
and stowing-away capacity is almost worthy of a professional conjurer.
Kleptomania (to give it as refined a name as we can) is her besetting
sin. Unfortunately her family follow in her footsteps.

Mrs. Price seems to have a positive gift for turning everything to
profitable account; and her methods of raising money are as ingenious
as they are varied.

Knowing her idiosyncrasies, I asked Abigail where she was at the
moment.

“In the kitchen, sitting in my wicker easy-chair,” Abigail replied,
still with elevated nose. “She just walked right in and plumped herself
down.”

Whereupon I indicated, by dumb pantomime, that she was on no account
to be left there without personal oversight; and Abigail intimated, by
means of nods and becks and wreathèd scowls, that she was keeping her
left eye on the visitor, over her shoulder, even while she was talking
to me. We both knew that all was fish that came to Mrs. Price’s net,
and she would negotiate with absolute impartiality a piece of soap, a
duster, or a half-crown, should they lie in her way.

       *       *       *       *       *

Not long before, Miss Bretherton, the Rector’s niece, a middle-aged
lady who keeps house for him, had tried to give one of the Price
girls—Esmeralda by name—a good start in life, taking her into the
rectory kitchen. But things disappeared with such alarming rapidity
during the first month she was in residence, that she had to be sent
back home again.

She left on a Saturday after middle-day dinner. In the afternoon the
house was observing the all-pervading quiet that was customary on
Saturdays while the Rector was in his study preparing for Sunday.

Miss Bretherton, requiring something in the dining-room that adjoined
the study, went in on tiptoe so as not to disturb him, when, to her
amazement, she came upon the discharged Esmeralda sitting on the floor
beside an open sideboard cupboard where some jars of pickles were
stored, ladling out pickled walnuts as fast as she could into one of
the maternal pudding basins. Seeing Miss Bretherton, she just picked up
her basin, walnuts and all, and hastily retired the same way that she
had come, through the French window.

Now, obviously her ex-mistress—over fifty years of age and liable
to rheumatism—couldn’t chase after her in house-slippers and minus
a bonnet, seeing it was raining; so the bereft lady just closed the
sideboard door and communed with her own feelings, womanfully stifling
her desire to burst into the study and tell the Rector about it, even
though it was his Saturday silence time.

Next morning, Sunday, just as she was buttoning her gloves, preparatory
to crossing the rectory lawn by the short cut to the church, the cook
came to her with the agitated inquiry: Had the mistress done anything
with the leg of mutton left by the butcher yesterday morning?

No, of course not! Why should she? etc.

Well, they hunted high and they hunted low, and the church bell gave
its final peremptory clang when they were still hunting, but no leg
of mutton was found either in the master’s boot cupboard, or under
the bed in the spare room, or in the bookcase in the library, or in
the woodshed, or in any other of the equally likely places which they
searched. Indeed, no one had ever expected that it would be found once
its absence was discovered; they just looked darkly at each other
and murmured, “That Esmeralda, of course.” Cook declares that her
mistress added “the good-for-nothing baggage” under her breath; but I
can’t credit that of Miss Bretherton, who always manages to maintain a
wonderful calm and self-restraint under the most trying circumstances.

At any rate, she told cook they must have fried ham and eggs for
dinner—if you ever heard of such a thing on a Sunday at the rectory!
and the Archdeacon of Saskatchewan preaching in the morning on behalf
of the C.M.S. too!

Moreover, Miss Bretherton was ten minutes late for church, a thing
never known before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; and then,
still more remarkable, instead of waiting to speak to people after
church, she set off at a terrific pace for Mrs. Price’s cottage, and
walked in to find the kitchen full of a delightful aroma, and a fine
leg of mutton just being taken from the roasting-jack by Esmeralda and
placed on the table, which was already adorned with a saucer containing
pickled walnuts.

Miss Bretherton knew better than to say, “That’s my leg of mutton.” Our
village understands all about “having the law on ’un,” if anyone upsets
their feelings in any way. Therefore, swallowing hard, and determining
for the hundredth time not to lose her temper, she said, “Where did you
get that leg of mutton from, Mrs. Price?”

Had the woman replied, “From the butcher,” that would have been fairly
incriminating, because, of course, we don’t require more than one sheep
a week for home consumption in the village, and, as everybody knows,
each sheep has only two legs, and it wouldn’t require a Sherlock Holmes
to track those two legs any week in the year. As it happened, this
week’s other leg had gone to my house. Had Mrs. Price claimed it as her
own, she would have been undone.

But she was too shrewd for that; she promptly replied, with a look of
surprised innocence at such a strange question being asked by Miss
Bretherton at such a time—

“That leg of mutton, do you mean, miss?” (as though there was a meat
market to choose from!) “Yes; ain’t it a fine one; it weighs seven
pound, if it weighs an ounce.” (Miss B. knew that; she had studied the
butcher’s ticket only that morning.) “I couldn’t get it into the oven,
so we had to roast it afore the fire. I expect you find the kitchen a
bit ’ot. But as I was saying” (Miss B. had to press her lips together
very hard), “it ain’t often as I get a windfall like this, but my
brother-in-law come up to see us yesterday from Penglyn, and he brought
it me for a birthday present; that’s why I had to send ’Sm’ralder round
to the rectory in the afternoon to fetch my pudding basin as she’d left
behind—the one she brought round that day with some new-laid eggs in,
what I give her for a present for cook’s mother who were bad.”

Miss Bretherton pressed her lips still tighter, and walked out. She
knew the brother-in-law wouldn’t speak to “that Jane” if he met her
in the same lane—such was the love between the two families—much less
bring her a leg of mutton; besides, he had none too many joints for his
own family. She also knew that cook’s mother had not been ill, and if
she had, it wouldn’t have been Mrs. Price who would have supplied the
new-laid eggs.

But she also knew the futility of attempting to circumvent a woman of
this type, and she hated to have her stand there and tell still more
untruths, the children hovering round.

So she returned silently, and served the ham and eggs, and listened
while the Archdeacon explained the difference between Plain Cree and
Swampy Cree (which, he was surprised to find, she had hitherto confused
in her mind, or at best regarded as one and the same language) with
all the Christian grace and forbearance she could muster.

Only once did this nearly give out, and that was when, after she had
apologised to their guest for such frugal fare and had briefly outlined
the reason for the same, the Rector looked with his usual absent-minded
benignity through his glasses at his plate, and said—

“Well, my dear, I hadn’t noticed any difference: I thought this was
what we usually have for dinner on Sundays.”

Just think of it! And for the Archdeacon to go home and tell his wife!
So like a man!

       *       *       *       *       *

This much as a general survey of Mrs. Price’s characteristics. She
doesn’t make an idyllic picture, I admit, nor seem likely to be in
the running for a stained glass window in the Parish Room. But then
villages no less than towns are made up of varied assortments of human
nature—and don’t forget we are none of us perfect.

Nevertheless, making all allowances for human frailty, you don’t
wonder that I wasn’t anxious for Mrs. Price to have the free run of my
kitchen, and Abigail, remembering that she had left her purse on the
dresser, hurried back.

I finished the letter I was writing, and then went out to see her. As
I approached, I could hear her:

“‘Sally,’ he says, ‘don’t let the kids fergit me,’ and then ’e was
gone. It’s this new disease they’ve got from America—the ‘germs,’ they
calls it—and they do say as ’e makes a beautiful corpse, though I
shouldn’t never have thought it of ’e, the Prices being none of them
pertickerlelly well favoured, even if he was me own pore husband’s
brother. But thur, thur, I say speak nothing but good of them what’s
gone.”

She rose when I appeared, and, with a good deal of side-tracking on to
irrelevant matters, chiefly connected with the excellence of her own
children, she explained that her late husband’s brother had just died
“over to Penglyn,” a little town fifteen miles away across the hills,
and in a most un-get-at-able corner of the county.

The funeral was to-morrow, and neither she nor the family of the
deceased had a scrap of black, “leastways, exceptin’ this bonnet,
which don’t look really respeckful to ’im as is gone, being me own
husband’s own brother.” I admit the item that had been placed upon
her head—whether for use or adornment it was hard to decide—resembled
a jaded hen’s nest more than anything else! The rest of her attire
consisted of a green skirt, a crimson blouse, and a very light fawn
coat (portions of costumes that had started life in considerably
higher social circles in the village), and a purple crochet scarf.

Dimly it occurred to me that I had not seen Mrs. Price in bright
colours before, for although she never wore the conventional widow’s
weeds, she was usually in something black or dark; the matrons
in our village haven’t gone in for skittish skirts or glaring
colour-combinations as yet! I concluded, however, that her black
clothes were too shabby. She was saying—

“And I didn’t know where to turn, m’m. Everybody saying they hadn’t
none when I called, and there didn’t seem to be a soul left to go to,
and that pore dear sister-in-law of mine—leastways same as, being me
poor husband’s brother’s wife—with not a scrap to put on ’cept his best
overcoat what she’s cuttin’ down for one of the boys.

“And then I bethought me of you, it come to me all of a suddint. I put
down the pan of ’taters I was peeling and come straight up. ’Sm’ralder
says to me, ‘But, mother, you can’t wear that ole bonnet up to _that_
house!’ But I says to her, ‘It’s certain I can’t wear what I haven’t
got, and the Queen haven’t sent me one of her done-with crowns yet.’ So
I just come as best I could.”

I was a little surprised to hear that she had been refused at every
door, for, irrespective of personal reputation, the better-off
residents are always very good to any of the villagers who may be
in want or in trouble; indeed, we have only one mean woman among us,
she who once remarked to a paid lady-companion, newly-arrived from a
freezingly cold journey, and badly in need of a cup of tea to eke out
her skimpy cold-mutton-bone lunch: “I’m sure you will enjoy a glass
of water. We have really _beautiful_ water here. Pray help yourself
when_ever_ you like.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Still, it was possible no one had had any black.

I meditated a moment on my own wardrobe and Mrs. Price’s capacious
waist-measure! Virginia’s things would be still less use, as she is the
size of a sylph.

“I’m afraid I haven’t anything that would fit you in the way of a
skirt,” I began, “but I’ve a large winter jacket if you don’t think it
will be too warm for June.”

“Oh, thank you, m’m. It’s only the first week in June. I’m a _very_
chilly person” (no one looking at her buxom proportions would have
thought so!), “and a thick jacket is just what I’m needin’ terrible
bad. And if you had a skirt, it ’ud be jest the size for my pore dear
sister-in-law. Ah, I can feel for her, being a widow myself, and left
with them children. She said to me on’y yesterday, ‘Jane, do try to get
me a black skirt from anywhere, if on’y you can.’ She says——”

“But you told me just now that you hadn’t seen her since before her
husband died,” blurted in Abigail, forgetful of her usual good manners,
and begrudging to see the family wardrobe being disbursed in this way,
as she rather regarded my coats and skirts as her perquisites.

Mrs. Price turned full upon Abigail that look of surprised innocence
that stood her in such good stead. “She said it in a letter she writ me
yesterday,” she replied with dignified composure.

Finally I told her I would look her out something if she sent Esmeralda
up for it in the evening. Mrs. Price lingered to recite further tales
of woe to Abigail, till she, kind girl, in spite of her private
estimate of the lady, bestowed on her a pair of black lisle thread
gloves, as she spoke so pathetically about having to go to the funeral
with bare hands and not being able to afford any gloves.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Virginia came in from “sticking” sweet peas in the garden, I told
her about Mrs. Price.

“Well, I don’t consider her a worthy object for charity as a rule,” she
remarked. “But at the same time, if Fate kindly supplies me with an
opportunity to get rid of that big black hat of mine that I’ve never
liked and never intend to wear again, I’m not the one to disregard it,
especially as it will save my carrying that huge hat-box back to town.
But whether she or the ‘sister-in-law-same-as’ wears it, either will
find it good weight for the money.”

So we left the winter jacket, and the hat, and a black blouse Ursula
added to the parcel, and my black cloth skirt for the sister-in-law,
against Esmeralda should come for them. And then we started out to make
some calls.

       *       *       *       *       *

Passing Miss Primkins’ house, we just stopped to leave a book I had
promised to lend her. Miss Primkins is a pleasant middle-aged lady, of
very small independent means, who lives in a cottage by herself. The
door stood open as usual. She looked over the stairs when I knocked,
then explained that she would be down in a moment if we would go in.

“I’ve been turning out things in the box-room—in order to find a little
black for that Mrs. Price. Her husband’s brother has just died, and the
funeral is to be to-morrow, and she says no one in the place has any
black in hand. So she came and asked me if I would mind _lending_ her a
black mantle!—_lending_ it to her indeed!

“I asked her what she had done with that black dolman I gave her not
three months ago—you remember that dolman trimmed with black lace that
I was rather fond of? I bought it—oh, it must be at least ten years
ago—for my uncle’s funeral. It was trimmed with two bands of crêpe,
one about four inches deep, and the other three inches, or perhaps
two-and-three-quarters; very stylish it looked, too. Then I had the
crêpe taken off and some black silk put on it—very good ottoman silk it
was—that had originally been part of a black silk dress belonging to
my sister. Next I had it covered with fancy net with velvet appliqué
for a change—not that I liked it, or would have thought of having it
done had I known what it was going to cost. But they do take you in so
at those town shops; why, I could have got a new dolman for what it
cost to cover that one! And then it lasted no time, used to catch in
everything, so I had next to no wear out of that.

“I had it taken off, and the dolman _thoroughly_ turned—every bit; and
the dressmaker put on some fringe, a sort of wavy fringe; but I had to
have it taken off, because that Gladys Price, when she came home for
a holiday, had on a silk coat trimmed with fringe exactly like it, so
there again I got taken in, as you might say.

“After that, I put my brown fur trimming on it, but for the winter
only; and then for the summer I put on some deep black lace. I hadn’t
had that lace on more than six months when I gave her the dolman. (I
remember quite well sitting up late that night to pick the lace all
off it.) Altogether, you can’t say I had so much wear out of any of it,
and it was a constant expense. And yet, would you _credit_ it, when I
asked her what she had done with it, she said it had ‘wored out’! Why,
_I_ could have had it another ten years in good use, without its being
‘wored out.’ She’s a thriftless woman, that’s what she is. Still, I
suppose it isn’t for us to judge her.”

       *       *       *       *       *

We had to hurry on. I wanted to call on Miss Bretherton, who had
sprained her ankle and needed commiseration. We found her in that state
of suppressed and bottled-up-in-a-Christian-manner irritation that
is common to very active women who are suddenly tied to a chair with
some of their machinery out of gear; and, like most other women under
similar conditions, she was trying to do ten times as much as she ought
to have done, in order to prove to everybody that there was nothing the
matter with her.

“You’ll just have to come into the midst of all this muddle,” she
sighed, “for I can’t move myself into another room.”

“Sorting things for a jumble sale?” I inquired, looking at sundry piles
of garments strewn about her.

“It almost amounts to that; though I really started out to get a few
things together for a woman in the village who seems to be rather
needy at the moment, that Jane Price. Her brother-in-law has just
died—you remember Zebadiah Price, who lived at Briar Bush Cottage
before they took a little place at Penglyn? We lost sight of them after
they left here—it’s such a cross-country place they’ve gone to. I’m
rather surprised they haven’t asked the Rector to bury him, he thought
a good deal of Zebadiah; but all the same I’m glad they haven’t, for it
takes you the best part of a day to cover that fifteen miles, and he
has a slight cold. It seems she’s going to the funeral to-morrow.

“I admit there are several women in the parish I should feel a greater
pleasure in helping—she does try my patience at times—but I felt I
ought to do what I can in this particular case, as she doesn’t seem
able to get any black from anyone else. Everybody says they gave theirs
to the last jumble sale, she tells me, though _I_ didn’t see any of it!

“She is wanting some for Zebadiah’s family too; they are left in
bad straits, she says. I was only too glad to find that she and
her sister-in-law have buried the hatchet at last; they’ve been at
loggerheads for years; she really spoke very nicely about it. She
said the older she got the more she felt life was too short to spend
it in quarrelling, and at a time like this she thought bygones should
be bygones. I don’t like to misjudge the woman,” Miss Bretherton
continued with a sigh. “Sometimes she seems so anxious to do right. Her
bringing up was against her. And yet——” And then the Rectoress closed
her lips firmly determined to say no uncharitable thing, even about
“that Jane Price.”

I’m afraid I didn’t think too highly of Mrs. Price at that moment.
I remembered the parcels of black garments waiting at my house and
again at Miss Primkins’. Moreover, Mrs. Price’s occasional lapses into
fervent piety annoyed me very much, because I suspected they were
developed for my benefit. She always gave me a long recital of woes and
financial difficulties whenever she saw me, and invariably finished
up with, “But thur, thur, I don’t let it worry me, for I always say,
‘The Lord will provide.’” I much objected to her taking the Name in
vain in this manner, more especially as it generally happened that she
gave Providence every assistance in the matter by helping herself to
anything that lay within reach of her hand!

       *       *       *       *       *

We did not stay long at the rectory, as I wanted to call on the lady
of the manor. She kept us waiting a few minutes before she appeared;
but explained, as she apologised for the delay, “I’ve just turned out
five trunks, two cupboards, and four chests of drawers—and goodness
knows how many more I should have set upon if you hadn’t come!
It’s a pastime that seems to grow upon one like taking to drink or
gambling—the more you have the more you want!

“I only meant to look through one chest for a black bonnet I thought
I had put there—I’m trying to find some funeral wear for that Mrs.
Price. Her husband’s brother has died, Zebadiah Price; they live over
the hills at Penglyn. While he was alive, she hadn’t a good word to say
for his wife; but now he’s gone, her conscience seems to worry her, and
she says she feels the very least she can do is ‘to show respeck to the
remains,’ and she wants to help his family. So I’ve been going over a
good deal of ancient history in my search for garments calculated to
show a sufficiency of respect. She said she was afraid that what she
had on might give a wrong impression.”

“If she wore the same set of glad rags that she had on when she came to
see us, likewise asking for mourning,” Virginia interpolated, “she’d
give the impression of a ragged rainbow gone wrong and turned inside
out, rather than a funeral.”

“Oh, she’s been to you, has she? She told me she couldn’t think of
making so bold as to intrude her troubles on other people, and only
came to me because she knew I had been so kind to Zebadiah years ago
when he was ill; and added that my clothes always suited her so well!”

When we got outside, Virginia suggested with a twinkle that we should
call on a few more people. We did, and at every house we were met with
the sad intelligence of Zebadiah Price’s death and his sister-in-law’s
quest for suitably respectful apparel.

Surely Royalty could not have been more universally mourned—in our
village, at any rate!

       *       *       *       *       *

Next Sunday we were rather puzzled on entering the church to see an
ample lady clad in the most resplendent of widow’s weeds, sitting in
solitary state in the very front row—a seat usually patronised only by
the halt and maimed.

Her dress and mantle were of dull black silk trimmed with crêpe about
a quarter of a yard in depth. True, it was not quite new, but its cut
and style were unmistakable; anyone who possessed such a dress could
afford to wear it even after its first newness had worn off; it stamped
the wearer as a lady of means. A long weeper, black kid gloves, and a
black-bordered handkerchief completed all we could see of the lady. We
could only conclude that the distinguished stranger must be very deaf
indeed, to take the front seat.

By this time all the congregation as it came in was interested. Such
a stylish stranger would naturally attract attention. She kept her
head devoutly bent, and used the handkerchief frequently; we couldn’t
see her face. She might have been a peeress-in-waiting, judging by the
dignity and decorum of her bearing.

It was just as the Rector was repeating the opening sentences that the
resplendent one turned round to see the effect she was making on the
congregation, and behold—that Mrs. Price!

I am afraid I only just saved myself from making the time-honoured
remark, “_Did_ you EVER!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“But what I want to know is this,” said Miss Primkins (as several of
us walked together along the high road after church, leaving Mrs.
Price giving details of the funeral, and the innumerable wreaths, to
her friends). “Where did she get those weeds from? There isn’t a widow
among us, nor a relative of a widow, so far as I know. Now who gave
them to her?”

But we none of us knew. It certainly looked suspiciously as though Mrs.
Price had used the poor late Zebadiah as an excuse for dragging the
whole county!

I wasn’t surprised that she herself had donned fresh weeds, for as
we are remarkably healthy upon these hills, we are apt to make the
most of a funeral when it chances our way, and the opportunity to
wear mourning, carrying with it, as it does, a certain personal
distinction, is not to be passed over lightly.

On one occasion I remember meeting a farmer’s wife on Sunday morning
in deep black (that had done duty for several previous family
bereavements), weeping into her handkerchief as she went along the road
to church. We stopped to inquire about her trouble.

“My poor old mother’s gone at last,” she sobbed. We were truly sorry
for her grief, and asked when she had died.

“Well, I ’spect it would be about three or four this morning; that’s
the time they usually go. I had a letter last night saying as how they
didn’t reckon she’d live the night. So she’ll be gone by now. My poor
mother! I’ll never see her again!” and she wept afresh.

I’m glad to say the mother is still alive, and very flourishing.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was about a fortnight later that Virginia gave me the
wildly-exciting information, culled from the local paper, that some
Roman remains had just been excavated. I murmured “Oh!” in that
absent-minded way people will do when their thoughts are called off the
subject of What shall we have for the midday meal? to higher things.

I was thinking like this: “I did intend to have steak and kidney
pudding, but as the butcher is late, there won’t be time to cook it;
there isn’t enough cold tongue—at least, that knobbly end part is no
use—we have plenty of eggs in the house, so we must just make out with
that soup left over from yesterday and omelettes; or we might easily
have——”

“Either a viaduct or an amphitheatre or a villa; they aren’t sure as
yet which it is,” went on Virginia. “You read about it yourself; it’s
awfully interesting. There; in that column—see? ‘Roman Remains at
Penglyn.’”

“At Penglyn? It can’t be Zebadiah,” I commented; “he wasn’t as old as
_that_!”

Nevertheless, we aren’t particular to a few hundred years in our
village. For I remember last year an old woman telling me, “Have
you heard, m’m, of the great news in the village? The Black Prince
is staying at the Inn! Yes, to be sure! And he seems to understand
our language beautiful, he do; though they say he does speak the
foreign to a gentleman what’s staying there with him. The only thing
I was surprised about was to see how young he do look, considering
of his age. Why, I remember hearing tell about him when I was at
school!” Later on I found the historic potentate was a harmless Indian
law-student.

Virginia kept on about the Roman excavations, and announced her
intention of going to see them. I protested that I wasn’t going to
be hauled across a stony mountainous region in a wagonette, and then
change twice by slow train, an hour or so to wait at each change, and
ditto to get back, all to see a few brick walls, when the garden so
badly needed weeding.

She was indignant, said she should prefer to go alone to having
unsympathetic and uninformed society; reminded me of the histories
of nations that had been found embedded in brick walls, waxed
eloquent on the subject of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Rosetta
Stone, skipped lightly from the pointed apex of the Pyramids to the
significance of the flat roofs of Thibet, examined the walls of the
buried cities in central Asia, and before I had fully realised that I
was really travelling in the East, I found that she was examining the
designs on the Aztec pottery of ancient Mexico.

Fearing that we should have this sort of thing straight on end for a
week, I said we would go next day, weather permitting, if only she
would help me decide whether to have the omelette plain, or a cheese
omelette, or would they prefer macaroni cheese? I have found in the
past that the crystallisation of thought necessary to follow Virginia,
when she is in an informing mood, creates a vacuum, and then I get a
cold in my head.

I also inquired whether she would prefer to drive all the way, or go by
train.

She replied, still with her eyes glued to the interesting newspaper
treatise on antiquarian relics, that she would rather I settled these
minor details, adding that she always liked to leave the arrangement of
everything to me, as it gave her such opportunities to point out to me
the feebleness of my methods and ideas.

I decided to go with her, simply because I knew that unless she
had some firm, restraining force beside her, she would go and buy
that Roman viaduct, amphitheatre, or villa, and order it to be sent
home; and, for all I knew, she might give _my_ address in a fit of
wandering-mindedness, and what should _I_ do with it when it arrived?
You can’t pack an amphitheatre away in the empty pigsty, and all the
other space was occupied with seedlings and things!

Besides, she has no bump of locality (neither have I, for the matter of
that); but I thought it would look better if two of us were arrested
for wandering about without any visible means of subsistence; at least,
I could say I was her keeper.

Next morning we inquired of the barometer as to the weather prospects.
By the way, that barometer is a unique treasure. V. and U. gave it
to me one birthday; I had long been craving one that was a genuine
antique. There was no doubt about this one—its antiquity, I mean; for
the rest, until you get on speaking terms with it, I admit that it
does seem a trifle ambiguous.

But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’ll say no more
on this point, save that we tapped it vigorously; whereupon the long
hand flew wildly round and round one way, while the short hand did a
whirligig, equally excitedly, in the opposite direction.

We waited till they both got tired of spinning round, and then, as the
long hand pointed to “Much Rain,” with leanings towards “Stormy,” we
knew we could rely on a very fine day.

But we tapped it once again, just to make sure it knew its own mind.
After it had wiggled giddily round as before, the long hand stopped
midway between “Set Fair” and “Very Dry.” Of course that confirmed our
former calculations, and we got out our new summer hats, and left our
umbrellas at home. Virginia had worn _her_ new hat indoors most of the
previous day, in order to get her money’s worth out of it, because she
said she never got her money’s worth out of any of her garments, save
her raincoat and her umbrella. [N.B.—Is an umbrella a garment?]

       *       *       *       *       *

It was market day when we got there, and all the town was of course
wending its way either to or from the market-place. One of the very
first people we ran against was Mrs. Zebadiah Price; but, to our
surprise, she was wearing neither my black cloth skirt nor Ursula’s
black blouse. On the contrary, she was in quite gay attire—a brown
coat and skirt, a blue blouse, a lace collar, a string of pearls as
large as marbles, and a tuscan straw hat trimmed with roses and purple
geraniums. I had known her in the past, when she lived in the village;
so I stopped and spoke to her.

“I was so very sorry to hear of your sad trouble,” I began. Yet
the subdued tones I used and felt necessary to the occasion seemed
curiously out of place beside all that market-day finery.

“Yes, thank you, m’m; it did upset me awful,” she said, looking very
woe-begone.

“I’m sure it did,” I said feelingly.

“You wouldn’t believe how I fretted over ’un. Seems kind o’ foolish I
s’pose when I’ve got the children. But I got that attached to ’un.”

“I can _quite_ understand it,” I murmured sympathetically. “After all,
children can’t take the place of the one that is gone.”

“No, m’m; that’s what I say.”

“And it was very sudden, wasn’t it?”

“Yes’m; taken bad and gone in a few hours,” she continued. “And that
was the second I lost in two months. I don’t have no luck somehow.”

“The second in two months!” I repeated in surprise.

“Yes’m, and I feel that downhearted about it, I don’t think I’ll go in
for another. I said so only last night to my husband.”

“Your husband?” I echoed again. It was beginning to sound like bigamy!

“He said at the time he thought the £15 I give was a swindle for the
brindled cow.”

“The brindled cow?” I said feebly. I really didn’t know what else to
say. Virginia need not have laughed!

Then I rallied my senses. “But I thought you had trouble about a
fortnight ago—your husband, Zebadiah Price—I heard——”

“My Zeb? About a fortnight ago? Let’s see?”—thoughtfully turning her
left eye in the direction of the church spire, and thereby tilting her
hat askew. “Ah, I expect you mean about last February; to be sure, he
did have a touch of this ’ere influenza; and he were a bit queer for a
couple of days, he were: but that was nothing to my losing my calf!”

“I’m glad it was no worse,” I said heartily. “Why, Mrs. Jane Price told
me she was coming to the funeral.”

“_Jane!_” ejaculated Mrs. Zebadiah. “Jane Price said she was coming to
_his_ funeral? Not if I know’d it, and it had been me very own even,
she wouldn’t; the _hussy_—begging your pardon, m’m, for using sech a
word. She knows better than to try to put so much as a shoenail of her
foot inside our door. She never aren’t and she never shan’t. Though for
brazenness there ain’t their beat in the county. Why, p’raps you’ve
heard how that there Gladys Price has started an ole clothes shop in
the town here, right under our very nose, and my husband as respected
as he is. There it is for everybody to read over the door—‘G. PRICE.
Ladies and Gents’ Hemporium’—whatever that may be! Coming to his
funeral, indeed! It makes me _broil_!” And Mrs. Z. went off fairly
sizzling with indignation.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we had duly found (after long search) and surveyed the Roman
remains (which consisted of three upright stones, something like those
used for kerbstones in the streets, and stood in the middle of a very
boggy field), and had failed to decide whether they were the viaduct,
the amphitheatre, or the villa, I suggested a speedy return to the
station, as it was now coming down a steady drizzle, with indications
of still more to follow. But Virginia said—

“I’d like, while we’re here, just to have a look into the hemporium
window, to see what she has marked that hat of mine.”

When we reached it, behold, it was like taking a regretful look
back into the past, for most of the garments there displayed we
had formerly known when they walked our village street in decorous
Sunday glory. And they included: a grey cloth coat of mine that had
disappeared most mysteriously; a long silk scarf of Ursula’s that, so
far, she had never missed; and a bead-bag I had often admired when
carried by the lady of the manor, and which, we felt sure, she had
never given away.

“Talk about excavating Roman remains!” I exclaimed; but Virginia’s
conversational powers were only equal to “_Did_ you EVER!”

And we damply faded away in the direction of the station.




VII

Just Being Neighbourly


THOSE superior Londoners who know nothing at first hand about Nature
“unimproved,” the type who find complete satisfaction for soul, body
and mind at some loud and crowded seaside resort, sometimes say to
me: “I can’t think how you can endure the terrible isolation of the
country—with absolutely nothing to look at, no one to say a word,
nobody to take the slightest interest in you, dead or alive. Well, _I_
should go out of my mind in such solitariness! But then, I am _so_
human; I do like a little life,” etc.

I don’t attempt to convert such people. After all, they are just as
much entitled to their views as I am to mine. Besides, I am only too
thankful that they keep away from our hills, and disport themselves in
an environment more in keeping with their personal tastes. We don’t
want the blatant woman, or the overdressed (which nowadays means
underdressed) woman, or the artificial woman, or the woman who “likes a
little life”; our hills would never suit them as a background, either
mentally or otherwise. Why, we have neither a music-hall nor a picture
palace for I don’t know _how_ many miles round! A benighted spot, isn’t
it!

But when they reproach us with having no one to say a word, and nobody
to take the slightest interest in our doings—well, I _could_ say many
things! But I merely assure them that we are nothing if not neighbourly!

       *       *       *       *       *

I took my sewing and went down to the bottom of the lower orchard. It
was a warm day, but not too hot to sit out of doors at eleven in the
morning, provided one found a shelter from the sun overhead. As I have
explained before, my cottage is on a steep hillside, the whole earth
runs either up or down. In only a few favoured spots can you place a
chair—and sit on it—with any degree of certainty; and even then you
probably have to level up the back, or the front, by putting some flat
stones under two of the legs. The slope of the hill faces south; hence
we get all the sun there is.

       *       *       *       *       *

The bottom of the lower orchard was just the place for such a day. A
wall with overhanging tangles of honeysuckle and ivy, and an oak-tree
that spread big arms well over the wall, gave just the shade one needed
from the blazing sun. I put the wicker chair with its back to the
wall—and such a comfort a wall is anywhere out of doors when you want
to sit down.

The view from this spot is very restful on a summer’s day: the hot
south is behind; one faces the cooler, glareless northern sky above the
hill that rises before one.

This orchard is but sparsely populated with fruit-trees, and most of
these are very old. There are some huge pear-trees that rise tall and
fairly straight, suggestive of rather well-fed poplars. There are
some twisted, rugged apple-trees, every branch and twig presenting
a wonderful study in silver and grey and green filigree, where the
lichens have spread and revelled unmolested for many a year. The
lichens are so marvellously beautiful, it always takes me quite a time
to get down to the lower wall; there is so much to look at on the way.
The delicate fronds, that seem closely related in their appearance to
the hoarfrost designs on the winter windows, show such a variety of
different cluster-schemes. They decorate the odd corners, and throw
beauty over the hard knots and gnarls, till I sometimes think they are
among the most exquisite things Nature has ever produced—only while I
am thinking this, I come upon something else equally beautiful.

Even on a hot day, when most of the mosses and lichens have faded
in the glare and drought, we still find the silvery-grey tracery
flourishing on the shady side of the apple-trees, and on the pieces of
branches that were snapped off and blown down into the long grass by
the equinoctial gales. I usually gather up an armful of these branches,
with their delicate pencil studies on a darker background, and carry
them down to the bottom of the orchard with me—only to wonder why I
didn’t leave them where they were till I returned, as I have to carry
them back up the hill again presently!

It may seem weakly sentimental to those who do not understand, but I
confess that, much as I love the smell of burning applewood, it always
gives me a real pain to put on the fire twigs that are ornamented with
moss or lichen. It seems heartless to destroy such beauty, even though
there is “plenty more where that came from,” as people sometimes tell
me.

In the summer I put the pieces of the grey-green branches, that I
gather up about the orchard, in the empty hearths and grates.

Many of the old trees originally planted in the lower orchard have died
or been blown down; the wind takes a heavy toll from these heights; we
can’t have pergolas and rose arches up here, as they can lower down in
the valley, unless we fasten them to very firm foundations.

As no previous owner in this happy-go-lucky district thought it worth
whiles to put new stock in the place of the fruit-trees that have come
down, there are plenty of open spaces, and comparatively little to
obstruct the view as you sit against the bottom wall and look up the
hillside. I am afraid this orchard is more ornamental than useful,
for the pears are the hard bitter sort used for making perry, a
drink that is very popular locally; and the apples are the equally
uninteresting-to-the-taste cider variety. Yet they are so exceptionally
beautiful, as the fruit turns crimson and yellow and golden brown, that
the trees become a glory of colour in fruit-gathering time.

After all there is excuse for ornament without specific use, if a thing
be very, _very_ ornamental—and the orchard certainly is that.

The sun reaches well under the trees, where the wild flowers and
grasses make a softly waving sea of colour. Of course, I know the grass
ought to be kept cut, so as to prevent undue nourishment being taken
from the earth for the support of “mere weeds.” But we pretend that
it is properly cropped by “Hussy;” she is the mild-eyed dusky Jersey,
belonging to the farmeress who supplies our milk, and is so-called,
because she has a playful habit of kicking over the pail.

Occasionally she is turned in and roams about at meditative leisure,
to the indignation of the small dog, who regards her as a hated rival.
But once the fruit appears, she has to be removed; either she chokes
herself with pears, or else they don’t agree with the butter; or
various other things. Even a cow seems a complicated problem when you
own a real one; and though I have only had cow-anxieties secondhand, so
to speak, my acquaintance with “Hussy” has led me to wonder whether,
on the whole, a tin of milk is a more sure and certain investment for
sixpence-halfpenny.

But even when the orchard has a tenant, it is surprising how little
damage she seems to do to the wild flowers. This is all the more
remarkable if you have ever seen what devastation one simple-minded
cow is capable of, if it indulges in but a ten minutes’ revel in your
flower-garden! “Hussy” seems to eat carefully round the flowers,
leaving the whole plant intact, which is more than a mowing machine
will do, despite its much vaunted up-to-dateness. Civilisation has
still a lot to learn.

Every season has its special flower show in this orchard. I only wish
I could get the same never-failing succession of flowers in my garden
that Nature does in hers.

On this particular July day the large field scabious was perhaps the
most noticeable flower; its mauve-blue blossoms high above all the
rest; its long stalks always determining to out-top everything else
that grows in the delightful medley.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Please, ma’am, I’ve brought you some flowers,” said a little pinafored
girl to me one day, when I had just arrived. She is an especial
favourite of mine, and lives in a cottage along my lane. This is her
way of just being neighbourly. In her hand was a large bunch of
scabious and grasses.

“These are very pretty,” I said. “What do you call them?”

“Please, ma’am, I call them ‘Queen Mary’s Pincushions,’” she said shyly.

The country names for the flowers are often so much more interesting
than the ones you find attached to them in books. After all, “Queen
Mary’s Pincushion” has something real and understandable about it for
just ordinary people like myself; whereas _Scabiosa arvensis_ (its
proper name) doesn’t stir my heart the least little bit. It was easy
to see the process by which the child had got the name—the flowers are
wonderfully like plump round pincushions, with the stamens for the
pins: but anything so delicately beautiful would not be suitable for
aught save a royal lady’s dressing-table; hence Queen Mary was, of
course, the one to whom they were dedicated.

And isn’t the name “Lady’s Laces” most suggestive? That is what we call
the white filmy flowers of the hedge-parsley. I seldom see a fine white
lace evening gown without thinking of the soft mist of white over green
that surprises us in June, and smothers the orchard when the Lady’s
Laces suddenly burst into billows of bloom.

Some of the local names are more material and prosaic than idealistic,
however. There is another flower that grows all about the orchard,
in close company with the scabious; it has bunches of bright yellow
flowers of the daisy family, growing in compact heads at the top of a
tall stem. I am very fond of this flower; it gleams sunshine all over
the place; but I don’t care to call it _Senecio Jacobœa_, which is
its proper name; it’s so mortifying when people look at you puzzled
and inquiring, and then ask, with a patient sigh, if you would mind
_spelling_ it! I never could spell.

Neither do I care for its other slightly less official name, “Common
Ragwort.” So one day when an old man was passing, who is fairly well-up
in flowers, I asked him if he could tell me the name of this Sunshine
plant. To which he replied—

“Wealluscallsemards’m.”

I didn’t ask him to spell it, because I don’t fancy he can spell any
better than I can. I merely said, “I don’t think I _quite_ caught the
name?”

“I said ‘’ARDS,’ Mum; (_crescendo_) ‘=’ARDS=.’ We allus calls ’em that
’cos they’re so ’ard to pull up.”

I thanked him, and still, in secret, call them the Sunshine
flowers—though I admit that Virginia, having recently set out gaily to
rectify my shocking laxity in the matter of the proper cultivation of
an orchard, at last decided herself to call them “’Ards.” She found
that the act of sitting down violently and unexpectedly so many times
in the course of trying to pull up a few innocent-looking plants, wore
her out more than it did the ’ards; so she gave it up at length, and
there they remain until this day!

Intermingling with Queen Mary’s Pincushions and the Sunshine flowers
is a rosy purple flower that blends delightfully with the other two;
Knapweed is one of its names; it looks something like a thistle bloom
at a distance, but it is really a relation of the Sweet Sultan that
grows in the garden beds, I believe.

Then there are Harebells dancing in the wind on the top of little
grassy mounds; so frail they look—yet “Hussy” never seems to walk on
them! Ragged Robins flutter pink petals beside a little brook that
runs down at the side of the orchard; and here are also big blue
forget-me-nots, with bright yellow centres.

But there is one thing about this orchard that very few people have
discovered, and that is the host of sweet-smelling things that you walk
on or rub against, as you carry the wicker-chair down to the bottom
wall.

Do you know what it is like to walk on Pennyroyal and Sweet Basil? Have
you ever stood still suddenly and said, “What _is_ it?” as a delicious
aromatic scent added itself to all the other lovely scents floating
around?

I discovered a whole world of beautiful scents in among the orchard
grass. The Pennyroyal was most unsuspicious-looking, till I stepped on
it. (I didn’t mean to step on it; but then one must walk _somewhere_!)
Next I found out the Sweet Basil, with its unobtrusive pink flowers.

Still I hadn’t found it all; a little later I came upon some wild mint
beside the brook. The tansy I had long been friendly with; the scent of
it seems to fit in so exactly with a hot summer day; and the wild thyme
that grows on a sunny bank at one side of the orchard you couldn’t
possibly miss, the bees have so much to say about it. Bushes of balm,
that have possibly strayed away from the garden, are always at hand, to
rub a leaf when desired.

But I think of all my favourites, the black peppermint has first place.
I shall never forget the day I first discovered its dark shoots pushing
up undaunted among the grass; not but what I had a long-standing
friendship with peppermint—in my first childhood, as bull’s-eyes; in my
second childhood, as peppermint creams.

But I hadn’t the slightest notion what it was like in its natural
state. When once I found it, I soon realised that it stood alone among
all the scented wonders. I put some of it at various corners about the
garden, because I found it has remarkable healing powers. No matter
how dispirited you may be or out of joint with the world, it is only
necessary to take a leaf, rub it and sniff it, whereupon the world
smiles again, and you realise that, in spite of all, it is good to be
alive. You will understand, therefore, how essential it is to have it
in handy places, so that weary people, even if they do not know of its
unique qualities, may rub against it in passing, and unconsciously come
under its spell.

It dies down in the winter, but when spring comes we always look
eagerly for the first purple-black shoots pushing up cheerily from the
soil.

It has only one fault; it suffers from zeal without discretion. It will
not keep within proper bounds. At the present moment I am wondering
whether it is better to dig up the bergamot or rout out the peppermint;
they are having a hand-to-hand fight for supremacy in one particular
flower corner.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am afraid my needlework was a mere matter of form that morning. Who
could glue their eyes to a piece of hemstitching with the whole earth
fairly dancing with colour and light around them? I faintly (but not
very earnestly) wished that I had brought knitting instead of sewing,
because that doesn’t need to be looked at, and you can keep up a
semblance of respectable industry while you are watching all the wild
things.

I had been feeling rather aggravated with a woman who had written
commiserating with my odd predilection for being “buried” in a spot
where there was “positively nothing to be seen.” She was really pitying
me! Well, I pitied her back, and pitied her hard; had she only known
it, she would have been aggravated too. So at least we were quits.
She had said that, for her part, she should simply die in such an
unsociable place. I took care to be just as sorry for her as she was
for me: it was a slight satisfaction to me! It was at this moment that
I heard voices of two women talking in the lane, hidden from view by
the orchard wall.

“How’s yourself, Mrs. Blake?”

“Only middling.” (We always start our conversations with
lugubriousness; it seems indecorous to parade health and happiness
before our neighbours!) “I’m in a tearing hurry. I’ve just been to the
doctor’s to see if he can’t give me something for my poor Jim’s tooth.
It do pester him something cruel. I promised him I’d run all the way
there and back; he’ll be raving till I get back.”

“Ah, he won’t get no peace till he has it out, I reckon.”

“The doctor says why don’t he have ’em out and get some new ’uns? But I
call it waste. Look at my sister’s husband: cost him a guinea his did!
Of course, he got a complete set top and bottom for that, fifty-three
teeth altogether I believe he told me, and as natural as you please,
I’ll own. But seeing as of course he’s got to take ’em out to eat,
I call it spending just for show, even if they do give you a good
mouthful for your money.”

“By the way, speaking of teeth reminds me—only I can’t stop to tell you
all about it now, as the children’ll be in from school at half-past
twelve, and I haven’t started the dinner yet—but I’ve just heard that
poor Mrs. Jeggins over to Brownbrook’s gone.”

“Pore thing! Is she though?”

“Yes, your mentioning Jim’s tooth made me think of it. They fancy it
started with a tooth in her case too; for she had faceache turrible bad
about six months ago, her husband told me. And then it just went all
over her like. The doctor simply couldn’t do nothing with it. He tried
every mortal bottle he had in his surgery, and gave her some out of
every single one, and _yet_ she died! But there, I s’pose it had to be!”

“I heeard tell from her sist’r-’n-law as she drank somethin’ awful;
but, mind you, if it’s a lie, ’taint my lie; it’s her lie as told me.
And I don’t at all hold with repeating a thing like that. But in any
case, I shouldn’t think it was her tooth! I expect she et something
that didn’t agree with her.”

“Well, maybe; as I always say, you can’t be too careful what you eat
nowadays. The dinner they’ve got up there smells tasty, don’t it?”

“Yes; it’s roast duck.”

“Duck, is it? I didn’t know they’d had a duck _this_ week. Who did they
get it from?”

“Sarah Ann Perkins—that old brown one of hers.”

“The _brown_ one! How much did she ask for it?”

“Four-and-six.” (An audible chuckle.) “Yes, _four-and-six_, if you
believe me! Fancy her having the face to ask it for that _brown_ duck!
But there, those that can afford to pay may just as well do so for
those who can’t.”

“Just as well. But—_four-and-six_! And she won’t finish it up neither;
doesn’t care for cold poultry, I’m told; she’ll have a fair slice
from the breast, but that’s all; never allows it to be seen in the
dining-room a second time. And there’s only the two of them there now.
Still, that Abigail’s a hearty eater! My husband was up there a-fixing
a tile that had got loosish on the roof, and he told me what she et
that day. A gammon rasher and an egg and four slices of bread and
butter and a piece of fried bread out of the frying-pan and two cups
of coffee—half milk—and some jam for breakfast. He was just a-going up
the ladder past the kitchen window at the time; and when he come down,
finding as he needed a bit of cement, she was having lunch of bread and
cheese and a cup o’ tea out of her lady’s teapot—she always has a cup
of tea between ’leven and twelve—and he’d smoked his pipe right out
afore she’d finished. And when he come down again at dinner-time she
was having a dinner fit for a growed man just come home from the cattle
market—made him hungry to see her, it did; he hung about a bit looking
for his jack-knife, as he wanted something to measure with. And at
tea-time he went in for a drop o’ water to mix the cement, and she was
having potted meat and toast—butter, too, not dripping toast, if you
ever did. But, of course, she relishes the good vittles she gets in a
country place like ourn. So different to the stuff you get in a town.”

“You’re right there; but they do have a sight o’ things down from
London. There was a box with ‘Army and Navy Stores’ writ on it that
was so heavy, it was all old Bob could do to get it on his shoulder,
with our Tom to give him a hand. Old Bob said he’d been reading in the
papers what awful waste there is in some o’ the army camps and how
the food gets throw’d away or sold by the cartload, to get rid of it,
but he didn’t know it was going on in the navy too—wicked, I call it.
They thought it must be tinned things, it were such a weight, but they
couldn’t make out for sure, though they rattled it ever so hard to see;
it was packed up awful tight.”

“Taters weigh heavy, but it wouldn’t be they; she’s got plenty, what
with new ones coming on soon, and a large box left still of the old
ones; I saw them in the scullery last time I was there. I’m going to
ask if I can have ’em, I’m so short for the pig. It might have been
soap and soda and hearthstone, though; they all weighs heavy.”

“That’s true. Still, I know for certain she has a heap of queer things
sent down, because when I was in Jane Price’s the other day, she had
a pot of something called ‘tunny fish,’ whatever that may be, on the
dresser. I asked her what it was. She told me she was passing here one
day and thought she heard someone calling her name; so she stepped
inside and looked around. No one was there, but she chanced to pass the
back door, and there on the top of the dustbin she saw this pot. She
brought it away with her just to ask our Tom if he knew what it was;
but he says they don’t catch it about here; never heeard tell on it.
Still, those sort of things aren’t like a nice piece of fat bacon to my
taste, to say nothing of duck; though I like a bit more picking on mine
than they’ll be on that _brown_ one, I reckon.”

“D’you know, I expect they’re cooking it now to have it cold for the
company’s supper to-night, because in any case they don’t _need_ it
to-day. They had two chops and a shoulder of lamb and some gravy beef
on Saturday. I met the boy taking it up, and asked him what he had.
They’d have the chops that day, and the lamb roast on Sunday, and cold
Monday; and it’s only Tuesday now, and they can’t have finished it
up—it was a fair-sized one; and there’s the gravy beef soup. You may
depend it’s for the visitors.”

“Oh! I didn’t know she was expecting company? It won’t be Miss Virginia
and her sister, because they’re abroad. She asked my husband to call
for her afternoon letters as he was passing the post-office yesterday,
and he brought ’em up, and there was a postcard with a picture on it of
some foreign place, and it said, ‘This is our hotel; enjoying ourselves
immensely; expect to be here a fortnight.’ And there was something
written at the bottom that I couldn’t make out, but it might have been
a ‘V,’ or a ‘U,’ only it was smudged so’s you couldn’t see _what_ it
was. So it was sure to be from them.”

“No, it wasn’t they two; ’twasn’t their trunks.”

“More than one trunk, is there? Then they’re going to stay a little
while. My Buff Orpingtons have started to lay again; that’s lucky. How
many do you say were coming?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I fancy it must be three, because there
were two blankets, one single-bed and one double, hanging in the sun
when I came past yesterday, and Abigail was polishing the downstairs
winders, and she’d got clean cutt’ns to the little room over the
kitchen, as well as in the sittin’-room. Not that there was any need
to put up clean cutt’ns, that I can see; those in the sittin’-room had
only been up two months, and the upstairs ones were new last time she
was down here; you could tell they were new, the muslin hung so stiff.
I take it a cutt’n isn’t properly washed if it don’t last six months at
least. But she’s very pertickler about cutt’ns. Abigail told my Mabel,
that in London they don’t never dream of keeping a cutt’n up more than
a month, and often th’whole lot is changed in a fortnight; and just
think, the winders is done _every week_! Send me crazy, it would! I
don’t think it’s healthy to be as finnicky clean as that; why, you’re
always opening winders and letting in draughts. And now this morning I
see she’s got the cutt’ns down in the Flower room——”

“The Flower room? Which be that?”

“Oh, it’s the name they’ve give the one on the right at the top o’ the
stairs. It’s got a new laylock paper on the wall, and she’s got a new
bedspread, white, with bunches of laylock all about it, and a bit o’
eeliertrope sateen hangs down behind the head of the bed to keep the
draught off, though it ’ud be far more sense to shut the winder, _I_
say, for that sateen’s faded dretful in the folds already. I was only
noticing it th’other day, when my cousin was up from Woolv’ampton,
and I took her over the house.... Oh, yes, Mrs. Widow’ll lend me the
key any time” (Mrs. Widow is my caretaker), “and it do make a bit of
a change to take anyone to. My cousin said at the time she’d never
buy a bedspread like that; the colour’s so fleeting. Besides, she
wouldn’t have a white ground in any case, it’s always in the wash.
She’s made herself a _lovely_ spread, she was telling me, out of a pair
of old long curtains, just cutting out the bad places and then dyeing
it a deep coffee colour with a little cold tea; makes it last like
anything. I say the same; them white spreads never pay for themselves.
Though I rather like the one she’s got with roses on—Hannah Craddock
was a-washing of it one day when I dropped in” (Hannah is the village
laundress), “that was the last time Miss Ursula was down, because
Hannah was doing of her blouses that week, and my Mabel was very taken
with one that had bits of crochet let in all about, and points of it up
the sleeves just here, and my Mabel tried to copy it, only Hannah had
promised it home that very afternoon, so we’re waiting for it to come
again, as Mabel can’t get the yoke quite right. I’m sorry it isn’t them
who’s coming. She wants to get it finished afore she goes to London
next month.”

“Did you see the name on the trunks? Now you mention it, I saw the boy
taking a telegraft up to the house yesterday—no, the day before.”

“It was my husband told me about it, when he looked in home just now,
and his sight being so poor, he couldn’t see the name” (in spite of the
Educational Authorities many of the men in our village cannot read,
but by courtesy it is always referred to as poor sight!), “so he asked
the station-master if he should drop ’em anywhere, as he had got her
ladyship’s cart there. He is helping at the Manor House to-day. He’d
just taken some hay to the station, and it seemed a real waste o’ good
time to do nothing with it coming back. But the station-master said
they was for up here, and old Bob was taking ’em up as the ladies
wouldn’t have the fly; said they’d _pefer_ to walk. And, would you
believe it, he never so much as thought to ask how many there were.
Still, I’ll soon find out and let you know. I’ll go up and ask Abigail
if she can oblige me with the loan of a little salt. I’ve a couple of
ducks myself as I’d be glad to get four-and-six apiece for if——”

At this moment Abigail appeared at the cottage door, and the gong
reverberated and echoed as she gave it a vigorous hammering, calculated
to wake me up wherever I might be.

“Good gracious, that’s for her one o’clock dinner!” exclaimed both the
women in one breath, and fled in opposite directions, presumably to
minister to the raving and the ravenous!

       *       *       *       *       *

As the conversation had implied, the duck was tough and inadequate; but
it was a certain satisfaction to me—as I sought about in vain for a
fairly good slice from the breast of the skinny carcase—to reflect that
I hadn’t paid for it as yet. I was out when the youthful Perkins had
delivered it.

For the rest, I didn’t attach any value to the women’s gossip. Once you
have any real footing in a rural district, and have become part and
parcel of the country-side, you soon learn that one impossibility is
“terrible isolation.” From rosy morn till dewy eve one or another woman
is engaged in lengthy gossip with any other she meets, and in nearly
every case the topic of exhaustive conversation will be the doings of
somebody else; moreover, the less that is actually known about the
third and absent party the more two and two will add up to nineteen.

In the main, I have seldom found such gossips either spiteful or
slanderous. They consider it being neighbourly to keep count of your
sayings and doings.

There were two items in the women’s chatter that were enlightening,
however. I had always suspected that Mrs. Price knew where certain
items from my store cupboard had gone one winter’s night when the
cottage was uninhabited and the kitchen window forced. I doubt if there
was another person in the place who would have done it. Still I was
glad to have the mystery cleared up.

I was not surprised to hear that all and sundry had the run of my
house when I wasn’t there. The Englishwoman who occupies any house of
more than six rooms, we will say (which she can keep clean her unaided
self), knows that she never can call any room her own, excepting the
one she chances to be in at the moment—and not even that one if the
British workman happens to be in the ascendant! It is one of the
compensations of life that the smaller our habitation, the more we
ourselves get out of it personally—a kind of “intensive” interest.
Whereas the larger our domains, the more imposing our houses, the more
numerous our rooms, the more they are monopolised by other people—paid
assistants for the most part—to the exclusion of ourselves.

In my own very humble way I soon realised that even my country cottage
and its contents were only my own so long as I could sit on them,
so to speak. I early discovered that my sheets and pillow-cases, my
towels and tablecloths, were not allowed to lead a life of idle,
selfish exclusiveness in my absences. Mrs. Widow’s enterprising married
daughter quickly furnished a room at her own cottage over an outhouse
which had hitherto been used as a lumber garret; this she could always
let in the summer, when the big houses in the neighbourhood were full
up with visitors and extra rooms were needed.

Of course, at times I proved exceedingly tiresome, and turned up at
inconvenient moments. But in such an emergency neighbours would assist
her with the loan of a sheet here and there and a towel or two, if mine
had to be returned hastily. I have always found the poor most ready to
help each other—especially when it was a case of “doing” someone who
was a little better off.

No, I was not surprised that Mrs. Widow graciously bestowed my door-key
on her friends in search of an afternoon’s recreation; but I _was_ just
a trifle curious to know how they had got hold of the lilac bedspread,
seeing that it was put away in a cupboard that possessed—so I prided
myself—a unique lock; and it had never been used yet—at least, not by
me!

       *       *       *       *       *

After dinner I wrestled womanfully with the overpowering desire to go
down the orchard again and do nothing; but a shower seemed threatening,
and I decided to answer letters and correct proofs indoors. I told
myself I would put in a full afternoon at really solid work, and would
even carry it right on into the night, if need be, without a moment’s
cessation save for the conventional nourishment—this, in order to clear
up some of my arrears, and to enable me to garden the whole of next day
with a perky conscience.

“How _do_ you kill time on a wet day in the country?” people sometimes
ask me. It’s simple enough. Here is the recipe:

* Draw up a chair to the table; get out ink and pens from one of the
aged oak cupboards beside the fireplace. Open the dresser drawers and
haul out stacks of unanswered queries from magazine readers, the office
staff, printers, block-makers, artists, authors, and from people of
whom I know nothing (friends and relatives gave me up long ago!).

Next, take the heavy lid right off the oak chest (hinges were broken
fifty years ago, so it won’t lift up properly), dive in for armfuls of
MSS., proofs, photographs, diagrams, sketches; place same on table;
proceed to hunt among same for some one particular thing I feel I
ought to deal with at that particular moment (though it may have lain
unhonoured and unsung for weeks); can’t find it anywhere. Go through
everything again, this time classifying matter slightly by putting it
in piles around me on the floor; still can’t find it, but unearth much
else that ought to have been attended to long ago but wasn’t.

Decide to search upstairs; turn out trunks, turn out cupboards, turn
out drawers (incidentally discover and meditate upon various things
needing mending); forget what I _was_ looking for; go on searching
for it; remember presently, and eventually run it to earth in my
blotting-book downstairs, where, if I had had any sense, I should
have looked in the first instance. Breathe freely, sit down—rather
exhausted—to serious work.

A tap at the door; “May I come in?” Enter visitor No. 1. And then they
follow in quick succession.

Finally, Abigail kindly undertakes to tidy up my papers “without
disturbing a single thing!”*

Next day (if still wet) you repeat from * to *, as they tell us in the
crochet patterns.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had just got settled to work on the missing-and-now-discovered
letter, when Abigail tapped and entered.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, ma’am, but could you spare me one of those
Missionary books?” pointing to a shelf containing a selection of the
annual reports of religious and philanthropic societies.

Now for some time past I had been trying to interest Abigail—who is
a church member—in foreign missions. I rather prided myself that I
had done it tactfully, not forcing it upon her, but just arousing her
interest by taking her to attractive meetings. I found that she had
even gone to one on her own account. Hence I was naturally pleased
to find that she was anxious to follow up the subject; but as I did
not consider an ordinary official report, with its small print, and
balance-sheets and monotonous lists of subscribers, the type of
literature best calculated to enthuse the novice, I reached down a
small volume of bright stories of girl-life in India, well illustrated
and prettily got-up.

“Here is just the very thing,” I said. But she took it reluctantly,
dubiously, turning it about and looking it over in a dissatisfied
manner.

“No,” she said, “it’s one like that I want,” pointing to a solid tome
issued by one of the most revered of our missionary societies. “Can I
have that one?”

“Certainly,” I acquiesced, though it was an out-of-date report, and I
knew the other book would have suited her better.

“Yes, that’s just right,” she said cheerfully, as I handed it to her.
“That other’d be too thin; it’s to go under the back leg of the side
table in the kitchen, where the stone floor’s broken. I’ve used one
like this regular since last summer, but it’s getting shabby. I thought
a new one would smarten us up a bit.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I remember on one occasion being at a missionary meeting for young
people, at which there was a remarkably fine speaker from the foreign
mission field. He said that if any felt they had a call to take part in
the work in any way, he would be pleased to see them at the close. When
the meeting was over, a small boy approached the platform. “Please can
I speak to you, sir?”

“Certainly, my lad,” said the speaker, shaking him warmly by the hand.
“Now, what is it? You can talk quite frankly to me.”

“Well, I wondered if—er——”

“Have no hesitation, my boy, in asking me anything you like.”

“Well, do you happen to have any foreign postage stamps?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Just as I had settled down again, somewhat chastened, to my much
neglected work, there was a knock at the door, and the lady of the
manor was shown in.

“I see you’re busy,” she began; “but I won’t keep you a moment. I only
want to ask you if you’re expecting Miss Virginia and her sister this
afternoon? No? Oh, I _am_ sorry! I did hope they were coming. But,
anyhow, whoever it is, do you think they would help to-morrow at the
Sale of Work? Two visitors I was expecting have failed me, and I’ve no
one possible for the picture post-cards or the pinafores. They needn’t
know anything about it, you know; it only wants someone who can reckon
up that seven penny cards comes to sevenpence, and that’s one and
ninepence change out of half-a-crown, and that sort of thing. Now, do
you think your friends would help?”

“But I’ve no friends coming,” I said.

“_Haven’t_ you? Why, I quite understood—— I was calling on Miss
Primkins just now (she’s jam and jelly, you know), and I asked her if
she couldn’t put it on the pinafores—it would look quite decorative,
and in this way I should save a stall; even then we shall be very
crowded. Mrs. Blake had just been in to say she couldn’t spare Miss
Primkins the duck she had ordered, because you had visitors arriving
to-day and would want a pair for Sunday.”

“Oh!! Well, I’m not having visitors, neither am I having the ducks.
But I’ll come down myself to-morrow, if that’s any help, and keep one
eye on the pinafores and one on the picture postcards. And I think my
mental arithmetic will be just right for the change you give.”

“But, don’t you remember, you’ve already promised to look after the
bookstall? You sent us that big box of books months ago, with some of
your own books in—which I want you to autograph, by the way. So I was
going to ask you if at the same time you’d manage the jumble corner—the
two things would go very well together.”

I agreed with her heartily.

“Oh, you _know_ I don’t mean anything like _that_!” she added hastily.
“I only meant that you could more easily turn from selling lovely
books, to dispose of one of your own done-with-but-still-charming coats
and skirts, for instance, than if you had to cut up for the refreshment
stall, and return with buttery fingers to respond to the rush there
will be for your autograph.”

“Add the postcards to the books,” I said, trying to be equally amiable,
“and Abigail will gladly run the jumble corner; she will be smarter at
it than you or I.”

Abigail appeared as soon as her ladyship had gone. The farmeress who
supplied us with milk was waiting in the kitchen to know if I wanted
extra milk morning and evening in future, on account of company; as,
if so, she would save it specially. She was experiencing a shortage of
milk, “Hussy” having run dry, and “Clover,” for some unknown reason
that I hadn’t time to listen to, not doing her lactic duty as befitted
her station in life.

Emphatically I said that I should not want any extra milk—and a few
other things.

I resumed my work.

Ten minutes later there was yet another interruption. This time it was
the owner of the Buff Orpingtons, who had arrived at the back door to
inquire if I was wanting any eggs—she’d brought eight with her, and
expected another one to-night, which she’d send up—her hens had just
started laying again, etc.

I fairly blessed the individual who had first set going the fable that
I was expecting visitors.

I told Abigail that it was a matter of perfect indifference to me
whether all the fowls in the district did, or did not, accommodatingly
lay nine, or even ten, eggs for my especial benefit; but what did
matter to me was whether I could, or could not, get nine or even ten
minutes of uninterrupted peace, in order to finish my letters before
the postman arrived. (He always calls obligingly at five o’clock for my
afternoon mail.) And I requested that she would kindly take in any and
everything that came during the next hour (so long as it didn’t need
paying for!); only, for pity’s sake, would she cease opening that door
and seeking advice on the subject.

After that I was left severely alone. From time to time I heard voices
in the rear; there was one very loud series of bumps and bangs—I
concluded it was the missionary report being introduced to the table.
But I worked on, and had just sealed up my last budget of proofs, and
addressed it to the printers, when the postman appeared. I heaved a
sigh at the amount of stuff he carried away. The shower had passed over
without even damping the blossoms. I would have some tea, and then
start watering.

The postman was speaking to someone at the gate. No, it wasn’t Abigail.
I heard him say, “Yes; this is Rosemary Cottage.” I was gathering up
my papers as footsteps dragged themselves along the path—“dragged” is
the only word for it—and before I had time to step outside to see who
was there, two female forms, one ample and one spare, made for the
door opening into the living-room, precipitated themselves into the
room, and sank into the nearest chairs, in the last stages of panting
exhaustion; while the ample one, in a coat and skirt of a large black
and white plaid, buttoned and piped with cerise, exclaimed—

“At last! Well, of all the out-of-the-way forsaken places! We’ve been
tramping nearly all day, trying to get here from that wretched station!
We must have walked miles—_miles_—up and down hill, only it was _all_
uphill; we found ourselves in woods with no possibility of ever
getting out again; we got into lanes that ended nowhere, and when we
got there it was the wrong place; we tried to take a short cut across
some fields, and got stuck in a bog; we met a flock of wild cows, and
the top of that hedge positively ran into me like needles. When we did
chance to find a house, hoping it was yours, it never was; the people
always told us to go on and ask further directions at the next house we
came to, but each time there wasn’t another house. Why ever didn’t we
take that fly at the station! But there, he could never have driven us
over all the huge stone walls we’ve had to climb! We’ve been walking
for hours on end—_hours_—haven’t we, dear?”

“Dear” nodded feebly. She was leaning back in the easy-chair with
closed eyes. Her hat—of a remarkable shape—was trimmed with what looked
like a kitchen flue-brush standing straight upright at the back; at
least, it would have been upright if her hat hadn’t shifted askew;
at the moment the flue-brush was inclining towards her left ear. Her
costume was mustard colour, with spasms of black. She must have been
_very_ pleased with it when she bought it, otherwise she could never
have induced herself to get inside it!

I soon found that the ample one did not require any reply other than
the feeble nod, as it would have impeded her eloquence. She went on—

“I think, if you don’t mind, we won’t go upstairs till we’ve had some
tea. We are absolutely prostrate, aren’t we, dear?” The flue-brush
dipped slightly. “Could we have some tea at once?”

“Certainly,” I said with alacrity. I had already decided that tea was
the only possible way to relieve the strain of the situation, and I
rang the bell.

Abigail, after one comprehensive glance at the callers, fetched my
very best afternoon tea-cloth, which she displayed on the table to
the utmost advantage, that not an Irish inlet or a bit of lace border
should be lost on the visitors. When she does not approve of any
callers, or does not consider them quite in keeping with the family
traditions, she invariably makes a terrific splash in front of them,
getting out the special silver and the finest china, and serving with
an air of withering superiority, as though she said, “Behold! this
is how _we_ live every day; very different from what _you’ve_ been
accustomed to!”

The tiresomeness of it is that when intimate friends call, who really
matter, the handmaiden treats the tea-table most casually; they
evidently don’t count if they are known to be above reproach!

From the look she gave the strangers, I knew we should have it all,
and we did! She was wonderfully quick in getting both the tea and her
smartest cap and apron. She put as much silver as she could squeeze on
the table; she got out some egg-shell china plates for the bread and
butter, and the old cut-glass for the preserves. She opened new jars
of plum, black-currant, strawberry and raspberry jam; she turned out
preserved ginger into a blue Chinese bowl; she put lemon-curd into a
quaint brown dish, and honey in a lustre saucer. She hunted out all
the cake we possessed, and opened a tin of apricots; she mashed up
sardines with Worcester sauce, and heaped it on pale lettuce leaves,
and she garnished some thin slices of ham most artistically with lemon
and cucumber and flowering sprigs of rosemary. All this while the
ample one was explaining to me how marvellously things were managed
in London, the miles you could ride in a motor-bus for twopence, the
cleanliness and speed and safety of the Tube, the ever-recurring
convenience of a halfpenny in a tramcar, and the luxury of a taxi; and
then more moans to think of the miles they had covered without meeting
either motor-bus, Tube, tramcar or taxi.

When the table seemed on the very verge of breaking down with its
abundance, and they had just drawn up their chairs, Abigail asked in
clear tones that the visitors were bound to hear, “Would you wish me to
bring in the cold duck, madam?” (“Madam” indicates company; “ma’am” is
ordinary every-day.) I wasn’t exactly anxious to bestow my to-morrow’s
dinner on the strangers, for I had reckoned to make the duck do for
twice; but, of course, under the circumstances, I was bound to ask
sweetly, “Oh, would you care for a little roast duck? It’s _cold_,”
I added, by way of disqualifying the joint a little in their eyes.
Fortunately they preferred ham, but it was satisfactory that at least
they knew we had roast duck in the larder.

After sitting up and taking a little nourishment, the wilted ones
revived perceptibly, and even began to be gracious. I am afraid I am
not very fond of the graciousness of that type of woman; she does get
it so mixed up with patronage. But I buoyed myself up with the thought
that perchance I was entertaining angels unawares—though they didn’t
look like it!

The ample one continued to be voluble. I did not interrupt her with
questions, because I find it is usually as well to let a situation
explain itself; it usually does in time. Besides, I didn’t quite know
what to say. I couldn’t exactly ask, “Who are you? where have you come
from? and why have you singled me out for this particular visitation?”
Yet the longer I waited, the more awkward it became to open inquiries.

“You have a very well-trained maid, I see,” the large plaid continued,
“that is to say, for the country”—with emphasis, to show me that there
were obvious deficiencies, only she was willing to make allowances for
them. “It’s the first thing I always notice in a house. We are used to
such excellent service—_most excellent_ service, aren’t we, dear?”

Dear agreed, but not very heartily; she seemed to ponder for a moment
before she said her customary “Yes.”

“That is one reason why I always hesitate about leaving home.” (How I
wished she’d hesitated a little longer! The sun was getting behind the
fir-trees, and I did so want to start watering!) “You have some garden,
I see, but it wants planning, doesn’t it? I wish you could see ours
at home; it would give you some ideas. We have a man in occasionally;
but we always superintend him ourselves. I’ll tell you how we have it
arranged. In the centre is a square lawn, and in the middle of this
we have a round bed with scarlet geraniums in the centre, and a ring
of calceolarias round them, and then outside that, at the edge of the
bed, you understand, all round, you know, we have lobelias, little blue
flowers, you know. You’ve no idea how bright and effective it is. And
then in the border all round the garden by the fences, we have standard
roses about a couple of yards apart, and a row of scarlet geraniums.
It’s so bright, and doesn’t cost so much when you buy them by the dozen.

“Your ceiling is very low, isn’t it?—still, for a cottage, it isn’t a
bad-sized room; and I see you’ve made the best of it with your little
bits of things put about.” I do wish you could have heard the charming,
indulgent condescension with which she said “your little bits of
things”! “Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen yellow walls before—very
_quaint_, of course, but—er—rather peculiar. Don’t you think so, dear?”

Dear said she did. But I don’t know why, seeing that she was carrying
about more yellow on her mustard person than I had in the whole of the
house!

“I _wish_ you could see our _lovely_ dining-room at home,” the plaid
continued. I murmured inarticulations, as there was a pause where I
was evidently intended to say something. “It has a dark red paper on
the wall. We have just furnished it with fumed oak. I think fumed oak
is _so_ artistic. We have a most _handsome_ sideboard that will only
just stand across one end of the room. I don’t mind telling you that
it cost fifty pounds originally, but as the people to whom it belonged
were a little unfortunate, we got it—well, we didn’t give quite that
much for it; but you’d never know. It was just as good as new. And we
have aspidistras and a _beautiful_ palm in copper flower-pots—really
exquisite works of art they are; and they go so well with the fumed
oak, don’t they, dear?”

By the time I had been taken over their _beautiful_ drawing-room, we
had finished tea—happily, for I already saw a _beautiful_ best bedroom
suite looming ahead.

Having made a most excellent, not to say solid, meal, the voluble one
shoved her chair back and said—

“I feel all the better for that cup of tea. Now, I think, if you’ll
show us the way, we’ll go upstairs and have a good wash, and make
ourselves presentable—not that you dress much for dinner, I suppose?”

I conclude I, too, was all the better for my cup of tea, for I felt
myself warming to the work—and I led the way washstandwards most
cordially. I didn’t take them out into the hall to the more modern
staircase, I opened the door in the corner of the room, and revealed
the steep stone stairs; and you should have heard their gurgles and
squeals.

“Oh, dearest, _do_ look. _Isn’t_ it primitive? And do you go up and
down this every day?”

“Oh, no,” I couldn’t help replying. “We only use this when visitors are
here. On ordinary occasions we get in and out of the

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