THE three had done nearly everything forbidden by the company’s notices,
and as the train slowed in order to stop at a junction, they expressed a
fierce determination to reserve the compartment for the rest of the
journey. If any one touched the handle they would fetch him (or her)
such a rap across the knuckles as wouldn’t make him (or her) half scream.
They were still discussing plans of defence when the train came to a
crowded platform; the three rushed to the door and side windows, shouting
an assurance that there was no room, that the door was locked, that the
compartment had been specially reserved. A short struggle, and
determined travellers made their way in.
“Young hussies!” exclaimed a brown-faced woman wrathfully. “Never saw
such impudence in all my life before.”
“They come down,” said another, “these yer London schoolchildren, and
they kick up such a deuce and all of a shindy that everybody in the
village begs and prays they’ll never be allowed to come again.”
“And the manners they learn our youngsters!” remarked a third. “The
expressions! The sayings! The tunes!”
“The country’s no fit place for ’em,” declared the brown-faced woman
emphatically. “I’m strongly in favour of every one keeping themselves to
themselves. I’ve never so much as thought of going up to London myself.
Sooner see myself dead and in my grave and buried, I would.”
One admitted she went up twice a year, but pleaded, in extenuation, that
she had a sister in service at Highbury, and invariably brought home
enough small suits and dresses to enable her eight children to attract a
fair amount of attention at the Congregational Chapel. Conversation went
on to safer grounds.
“All finished?” asked the shortest of the three London children
presently. The ladies sniffed and declined to answer. “’Cos if so,
perhaps you won’t mind if we say a word. We don’t come here for a week’s
’oliday to please ourselves; we don’t come down here for the benefit of
our ’ealth; we come down so as to brighten you up a bit, and give you a
chance of—”
“Mixing with intelligent people.”
“Be quiet!” she ordered to her companions. “Leave it to me.” She
addressed the women again. “To give you a chance of seeing what a lot of
pudden-headed fools you are.”
The passengers, trembling with annoyance, whispered a recommendation that
no notice should be taken of these remarks; the brown-faced woman could
not, however, refrain from hinting at a course of procedure which would
be adopted were the child one of hers.
“The idea is this,” went on the short girl, with the patient air of
endeavouring to make a complicated matter clear to defective intellects.
“You dawdle about every day of your lives, seeing nothing, ’earing
nothing, doing nothing. You very seldom speak, and when you do you talk
in such a peculiar style that you can’t possibly understand one another.
So the County Council comes to us and it says, ‘Miss Parkes,’ or whatever
our name happens to be, ‘sorry to trouble, but you’ll shortly be taking
your ’olidays, and will you be so kind and so obliging as to go down to
such-and-such a place, and do all you can to liven it up. It’s asking
you a great deal,’ says the County Council, ‘but the Fund is very keen
about it, and if you can spare the time, and if you’ve got the
willingness, why,’ says the County Council, ‘we shall look on it as a
great favour!’”
“‘And make it worth your while,’” suggested her companions.
“I’ll biff you two,” she threatened, “if you can’t keep quiet when I’m
talking!”
“The daringness of the child!” exclaimed the rest of the compartment,
amazedly and heatedly. “Don’t believe there’s a single word of truth in
what she says! The trollops!”
“Facts are facts,” she said, smoothing her brief skirt, “and it’s very
little use pretending you can get away from them. It’s no pleasure to me
to have to tell you all this, but it’s only right you should know. As
for us finding any satisfaction coming to these ’eaven-forsaken places—”
She laughed scornfully, and because her two companions did not join in
this ordered them to wake up and sing something.
“If you do,” threatened the brown-faced woman solemnly, “I shall most
certainly report you to the guard at the next station. It’s agenst the
by-laws, and you can be punished for doing it. Punished well. My eldest
boy is going on the line when he leaves school, and it stands to reason I
know what I’m talking about. So you just dare, that’s all!”
They allowed one station to go before beginning, and during the
half-minute of rest there chaffed an official until he became scarlet
with confusion. On the train re-starting, the three lifted their voices
to shrill music, singing a satirical melody with, for last line of the
refrain, “Oh, what a jolly place is Engeland.” This was followed by a
song that caused the other passengers to gaze steadily at the roof of the
compartment; the girls did not conceal their diversion at the sensitive
nature of the country mind.
“What shall we give ’em next?” asked the eldest girl.
“Wait a bit and let me think,” answered the youngest.
The women said that by rights Parliament ought to step in. If Parliament
once decided that these common, vulgar children were not to be allowed,
even once a year, to come down into the country and make themselves a
nuisance, then it would be stopped. It only needed that Parliament
should say the word. Parliament would have to be spoken to about it.
Parliament busied its head concerning a lot of things which did not
matter; but here was a subject Parliament might well tackle, and thus
earn the grateful thanks of a nation.
“Let’s give ’em,” said the youngest, “one of them songs we’ve been
learnin’ at school lately. There isn’t room, or else we’d do one of the
Morris dances. That’d make ’em open their eyes!”
At the first verse the brown-faced woman put down her basket and gave all
her attention. As the refrain began she unconsciously nodded her bonnet
to the rhythm.
“‘Where are you going to, my pretty maid?
Where are you going, my honey?’
‘Going over the hills, kind sir,’ she said,
‘To my father a-mowing the barley!’”
“Why, do you know,” she cried, “I ’ent heard that not since—”
“Order, there!” commanded the girl imperatively. “Some of you’ll get
chucked out if you don’t keep quiet.”
The last verse came to the deeply interested compartment:
“And now she is the lawyer’s wife,
And dearly the lawyer loves her;
They live in a happy content of life
And well in the station above her.”
The women clapped hands. One remembered her grandmother singing it years
and years and years ago; another had heard it once and only once, at a
Foresters’ fête; a third had always recollected the air, but the words
she could not have recalled though you offered her a pension. The London
children, touched by the genuine enthusiasm, sang “Blow Away the Morning
Dew” and “The Two Magicians.” The audience pressed apples upon them.
“You’re never getting out here, my dears?” protested the brown-faced
woman. They assured her this was their destination. “Well, then,”
taking up her heavy basket, “dang it all—it only means a extra fowermile
walk for me—if I don’t get out with you, just for the pleasure of your
company!”