“If you have any doubt about me, let the dog out, he’ll soon tell you
if I’m a genuine case or an impostor.”
The dog was whining inside, and trying frantically to get out. The girl
debated, and then said—
“All right; but you won’t mind waiting a minute?”
“Oh, not at all!” he replied, with sweet sarcasm. “I don’t mind in the
least how long I stand here in the cold. I quite enjoy it.”
Then suddenly the door was flung open, and Eileen, holding a photo of
the Head of Affairs in her hand, which she had fetched down from my
bedroom, started to compare it carefully with the original.
“Yes,” she sighed; “you are something like it.”
But the visitor had walked in unceremoniously, with the joyful dog
leaping around.
“Now,” he said severely, as he took off his coat. “Where is your
mistress?”
Eileen looked mournful. “If you please, sir, I’m _very_ sorry, but I
told you a _wicked_ story just now. The mistress isn’t entertaining
friends”—that was self-evident, as the cottage living-rooms were empty,
and it was hardly the kind of day one would choose to entertain friends
in the garden—“and she isn’t ill in bed neither. She isn’t here at all.
But I didn’t like to say so at first. I was afraid, not knowing who you
were, and coming after the shock. Have you heard the awful news?”
“No!” exclaimed the harassed, hungry man, jumping to his feet again in
alarm. “What’s happened?”
“Haven’t you heard?” and Eileen lowered her voice to an hysterical
whisper. “_We’ve discovered footprints!_”
By this time the Head of Affairs was quite convinced in his mind that
either the girl was not in the full possession of her senses, or else
she had been to see a Robinson Crusoe pantomime, and it had turned her
brain, so he merely said—
“Well, perhaps you’ll now try if you can discover some coffee, and that
as quickly as possible.” And he dismissed her when he had ascertained
where we had gone, as he was rather weary of the whole performance.
* * * * *
Meanwhile my guests and I were making a few neighbourly calls in
passing. In a scattered community that is often cut off by the weather
from intercourse with its fellow-kind, a little gossip is always
welcome. Not idle gossip, I would have you understand; but talk on
things of serious import. For instance, I was naturally very glad to
learn from one of my neighbours that old Mrs. Blossom had not been
secretly harbouring a German spy after all, as it turned out that the
masculine under-vests that had been hung out each week lately with the
wash really belonged to her late husband; and after cherishing them for
five years, she had decided it was more patriotic to wear them herself
at a time like this, than to buy herself new ones when wool was so
badly needed for the troops.
It was a real satisfaction to get this mystery cleared up at last, as
her clothes-line each Monday morning (when the weather was fine) had
worried us greatly. When I say “us” I don’t mean myself necessarily,
because I fear I hadn’t kept track of her washing as I ought to have
done if I called myself a friend and neighbour. Most remiss of me,
of course. Still, there it was; and I had no need now to creep along
beside the hedge and take an inventory of her garments; neither need I
fear for the safety of our hill.
Fortunately, with us time is of no importance, the clock really doesn’t
signify, even if it goes, which isn’t guaranteed; we divide the day
into three meals, which are regulated by the three trains that puff up
the valley, week-days only. Sunday is more of a problem, if you have
children to be got off to Sunday-school; but as Mrs. Jasper has the
one reliable clock up in our corner of the hills, her children set the
pace; and when Maudie Jasper’s starched China silk Sunday frock is
seen to be coming along the lane, accompanied by other little Jaspers
in Lord Fauntleroy blue velvet suits and a bunch of everlasting pea,
blush roses and southernwood for teacher, then the two or three other
cottages in the vicinity hurry up and add their quota to the little
procession that walks decorously (so long as it is in sight of maternal
eyes) down the hillside trail to the Sunday-school in the valley.
Of course awkward mistakes sometimes happen, as they do in the best
of well-regulated families. It was so on the occasion of the first
introduction of Daylight Saving. Naturally the weekly newspaper and the
vicar and the schoolmaster, and everybody, had explained to everybody
else that on a certain Saturday night the clock must be put forward
one hour, etc. We are anything but behind the times on our hills,
and no clocks in the whole of the British Isles were set forward an
hour more eagerly than ours were; only, obviously, if you haven’t a
clock that goes, you can’t set it forward; therefore our little corner
looked feverishly in the direction of the Jasper clock, and frequently
reminded the Jaspers of their national duty.
To make quite sure that the important rite wasn’t overlooked, Mrs.
Jasper put the hands of the clock on an hour when first she got up
on the Saturday morning, instead of last thing at night, as the
authorities had decreed. An hour more or less made no difference to the
family, seeing that it was Saturday and no school to be thought of.
Meals came as a matter of course, and quite irrespective of clocks.
Mrs. Jasper knew that if she didn’t see to the thing no one else would.
So she got it off her mind nice and early.
Later in the day Mr. Jasper thought of the new official regulations
_re_ Daylight Saving; and knowing the uselessness of ever hoping to get
a brain that was merely feminine to grasp any great truth as set forth
in newspapers, he himself put the clock on an hour; as master of the
house he regarded it as his peculiar office to see that the law was
duly enforced. He didn’t mention the matter to his wife; what would be
the good? And it wasn’t her concern anyhow; but as he shut the door of
the clock, he wondered where indeed the household would be if it were
not for him and his thoughtful habits!
Then there was Maudie Jasper. Being a bright child of twelve, brought
up on modern educational lines, naturally she had no very high opinion
of her parents’ intellects. Since it was she who illumined the home
with the torch of learning, she felt it devolved on her to see that
the clock kept abreast of current events. Besides, she was a shining
example in the matter of Sunday-school tickets; she didn’t intend to be
late next morning. So she, too, put on the hands an hour.
It was just as Mrs. Jasper was going upstairs to bed at night, tired
out with the Saturday night bathing of the children, that the clock
stared her in the face, and the question arose: Had she, or had she
not, put on that clock an hour as she had meant to? Her memory isn’t
good at the best of times, and she was especially done up with a day
that somehow had not seemed _nearly_ long enough for its accustomed
duties, though she couldn’t make out why. But to make quite sure,
she gave the hands a flick round; better be quite certain than have
Maudie late for Sunday-school. Only she did wish they didn’t leave
_everything_ for her to do!
Next morning, when the Vicar drew up his blind at 7 A.M., as is his
unfailing wont, he saw a small group of children standing forlornly
outside the Sunday-school door, waiting for the 10 o’clock opening!
* * * * *
Mrs. Jasper’s was the next cottage we called at, to inquire after her
husband, who was now at the front. Mrs. Jasper was delighted to see us,
and of course asked if we had further news of the burglar, the fame of
our footprints having spread far and wide. She told us all about the
neuralgia in her head, and seemed much relieved when we assured her
that it was not at all likely to turn to appendicitis.
She had had a lurking fear that if it became appendicitis, she would
have to go to a hospital, and she hadn’t much belief in hospitals.
There was her sister’s little boy Tommy, up in London, just four years
old, and all nerves, as you may say; screamed and kicked like anything
if you didn’t give him what he wanted the moment he asked for it. They
couldn’t do nothing with him.
At last they decided to take him to a hospital; so her sister-in-law
and “his” mother went with her. And what do you think the doctor said,
after they’d told him the symptoms? “Temper,” he says; “just bad
temper. Take him home, and spank him next time it comes on.” And that
was all they got!—cost them fivepence each for car-fares too!
We asked after her own family. Maudie was getting on splendidly at
school, “really a first-class scholard she is, although it’s I that say
it. Can read the Bible beautifully now—or at any rate the Testament”
(with a desire to be absolutely truthful). “And when I’m writing to her
father, and can’t quite rec’lect how to spell a word, she can tell me
two or three different ways of spelling it, right off pat!”
At the next cottage we stopped to inquire after a man who had met
with an accident, which necessitated the amputation of one leg below
the knee. Having given him all our own “Surgical Aid” letters, and
fleeced our friends of theirs, I naturally asked why he wasn’t
wearing the artificial limb that had been procured? (it was reposing
artistically on the top of the chest of drawers in the kitchen,
a stuffed sea-gull under a glass shade on one side, balanced by
a wedding-cake-top-ornament under glass on the other). Wasn’t it
comfortable? I asked. Didn’t it fit?
“Oh, yes’m, thank you; it fits beautiful. But that’s my _best_ leg; and
the missus likes me to keep it there where she can show it to everyone,
and I only uses it for Sundays and Bank ’Ollerdis.”
Then we looked in on Mrs. Granger, a happy-go-lucky widow who is always
passing round the hat. When we knocked at the kitchen door, she was
pouring down the sink the liquor in which she had just boiled a piece
of bacon. I couldn’t help asking mildly and deferentially: “Have you
ever tried using the liquor of boiled bacon for making pea-soup? It’s
very nourishing, as well as tasty.”
Mrs. Granger smiled at me indulgently. “Well, ma’am, seeing that I’ve
buried two husbands and three children, no one, I fancy, can give _me_
points about feeding a family!”
At Mrs. Jones’s we made a longer call; we simply had to, as we were
wanting milk, and she made no move to get it, but merely stood talking.
There was the mirror over the parlour mantelpiece, she particularly
wanted us to see that. Arundel Jones (aged eleven) had smashed a hole
right through the glass when practising bomb-throwing in there. But
would you ever know it, the way Patricia (aged seventeen) had decorated
it? And as we couldn’t think what to say, we looked long and earnestly
at the bunch of artificial and rather faded roses from Patricia’s hat
that had been stuck in the hole, with some green paint daubed around on
the glass to represent leaves. Fortunately, Mrs. Jones didn’t wait for
our opinion—took it for granted, indeed, since there could only be one
opinion about such a masterpiece—and proceeded to ask what I thought
could be done with so artistic a girl.
And that reminded her, could I tell her where she could write to in
London for some Loop Canvas at a penny a yard? Patricia wanted to make
some slippers for a young man friend of hers who was at the front, and
sweetly pretty too, with forget-me-nots all over; but it said you must
have penny Loop Canvas. She had asked for it in Chepstow, but they had
never heard of it, the cheapest they had was 1_s._ 4¾_d._, and no loops
in it at that. But, of course, you could get everything in London.
I had never heard of the canvas myself (and I thought I knew most that
was going!), but in any case, she wouldn’t get any canvas at 1_d._
a yard now, I told her; she had evidently got hold of some very old
directions.
No, she hadn’t; it was in last week’s _Home Snippets_, and she got
the periodical out from among an assortment of similar data under the
horse-hair sofa squab, to show me.