Part 8

“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!