We called her Lucy because she came from the country and "dwelt on a
wide moor." We never knew her real name.
She came like a ray of sunlight into our dull sordid town once a week
with immaculate white apron, wearing a cap of an older, honester world,
carrying a basket of delicious country butter made up in appetising
rolls. On the clean napkin which covered the top of the basket always
reposed a huge door-key, "to keep," she said, "the butter from turning."
And the white hair of her and those wonderful blue eyes which looked you
through and through! No wonder my wife was in love with her and refused
from that time to eat the dull town-grocer's wares.
My wife often muses as to the real cause of the general superiority of
dwellers in the country over the apologies for humanity who live in
towns. She says it is moral fibre. She comes from the country herself
and is quite unbiassed. For me I think it must be living so much amongst
sheep and lambs and woolly things.
I shouldn't have said myself that our town butter was without fibre, but
this is a matter of taste.
My wife would often close her eyes when eating Lucy and conjure up
pictures of her own simple girlhood days, of the country rectory, of the
rooks singing matins and vespers in the trees. Country people often get
like this over an egg at breakfast. I didn't eat Lucy myself, as my
taste is ruined by my vicious town breeding; besides, Lucy was a luxury
in war-time, and Dossett's Genuine Creamery has for me a meatier savour.
Cecilia always gave Lucy more than the market value for her butter and a
cup of tea besides, while they chatted occasionally over things dear to
rural hearts, accidents by flood and field, turnips and parochial
vestries. My wife used to marvel at the superior firmness of Lucy's
butter, which was ever the same, Lucy's explanation being that she had a
wonderfully cool hand.
Our local inspector, a man of the latest and most scientific knowledge,
confirmed this statement. In introducing Lucy to our resident magistrate
he said she was the coolest hand he had ever known. It was a bad case.
It had ten per cent. too much of this, and fifteen per cent. too much of
that, and the rest was the cheapest margarine and stirring. There wasn't
a cow within five miles of her place and he didn't believe she had ever
seen one.
We haven't met Lucy since. My wife says that WORDSWORTH was often taken
in, just like that. And she has heard, anyhow, that Lucy was born in
Bradford. So that it proves nothing.
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