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.”