I was reminded of the funeral when I arrived at the valley station one spring morning, by the fact that it was “the remains” who opened the carriage door for me and helped us out with our things.

He was home for a few days’ leave, looking very smart and upright in his uniform; and he saluted (even though he permitted himself to smile) when I gave him a half-crown, telling him to buy himself a wreath.

The white-painted garden gate had been placed wide open by way of welcome. We had left behind us, in town, weather that called itself the end of March, but in reality ought to have been January; we arrived at the little cottage to find that the calendar had taken a leap forward, for here it was like the end of April. On the grey stone walls beside the gate clumps of wallflowers were in bloom—masses of pale primrose flowers mixed with those of a rich rose-purple variety; only these two sorts had been planted in the chinks of this particular wall. I am sure the dear things nodded at us as we entered.

All over the garden were more wallflowers bursting by the thousand into bloom. Some beds were a mixture of clear bright yellow flowers, combined with the sort that are a deep mahogany, looking as though they were made of velvet; other beds had a pretty rose-pink variety; while on the top of more walls, and in corners and patches about the garden, were the old-fashioned “streaky” kinds, all aglow with brown and yellow.

The long bed in front of the porch, given over to cowslips, oxlips, polyanthus, auriculas, and suchlike homely flowers, was very gay. The polyanthus were a delightful medley of claret colour, pink, brown, crimson, orange, yellow, most of them looking as though the edges of the petals had been buttonholed around with silk of a contrasting colour. It seemed as though the flowers in this bed fairly tip-toed as we came along the path, and stretched their necks as high as ever they could, from out of their crinkled leaves, to show how remarkably fine they were.

In the narrow beds under the cottage windows double daffodils made plenty of colour, and at the edge were clumps of primroses—various shades of pink and crimson. These had seeded over into the path, with the result that baby primrose-plants were coming up cheerily between the rough flagstones. The ordinary yellow primrose was starring the grass all about the orchard, where wild daffodils were swaying by the hundred. The white flowers of the blackthorn were like snowdrifts on the hedges.

It was so wonderful, after the bleak, cheerless aspect of town, to come upon this world of smiling growing things. The soft air, sweeping over the hills, brought the scent of ploughed fields and newly-turned earth, of bursting buds and opening blossoms, with the ozone of the sea, and the salt of the weed that lies on the rocks around the lighthouse in the far-away distance.

There seemed to be an all-pervading peace that laid hold of one’s very soul; and yet you could not say it was really quiet, for birds were giving rival concerts in every tree, and quite a number were devoting their energies to saying insulting things to the newcomers and the small dog who had taken the liberty of encroaching on their ancient heritage. They are not sufficiently grateful for the fact that I leave my woods uncut, and undisturbed, as bird sanctuaries.

Lambs were bleating in the valley meadows; the spring gurgled cheerfully outside the gate as it tumbled out of the spout into the pool below.

We stood in the garden for a moment to take a good breath, and drink in as much of the beauty as we could, when Virginia just touched my arm and looked towards a long belt of trees—mostly oak and fir—that runs down one side of the garden and orchards, linking the larch woods up above us with the birch and hazel coppice down below—the coppice where the nightingales sing, and the tiny wrens and the tomtits build, and where the little dormouse lives, who comes out from among the undergrowth, with no apparent fear, when I stand in the wood-path and softly whistle.

This barricade of trees was originally left standing when the rest of the ground was cleared, to screen the house from the winter gales. But we have named it the Squirrels’ Highway.

Sure enough, as we stood there silent and motionless, down came one little bushy tail from the upper woods, followed by another, probably his wife. They leapt from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, nibbling a young oak shoot here, sniffing delicately at a few leaves somewhere else.

Little bright eyes looked down and saw the strangers; but they had seen them before, and no harm ever resulted—only lovely feasts of nuts laid out on the tops of walls—so they just ran on down their own highway, seeming as light as feathers, and leaping and springing with indescribable grace.

At last they got to the high wall that divides the lower orchard from the birch and hazel coppice, and they played along that wall, bright spots of reddy-brown against the dark green of the ivy and the purple tone of the swelling birch buds. All seemed gaiety and happiness, till a third little bushy tail popped up over the wall from the coppice—and then there were fireworks indeed! I expect they were relations who were not on cordial terms! We left them having a whole-hearted hand-to-hand fight—which, I must say, seems a much more satisfactory way of settling a difference than either Zepp or submarine methods.

Indoors the table had been laid for tea, preparatory to our arrival, by Mrs. Widow, who, as already mentioned, is the custodian of the house in my absence. She gives an old-world curtsy that is very disarming, and says, “I’m main glad to see you back again, miss, and I hope you’ll find everything to your liking.”

That, however, is as it may be.

Nevertheless, there is something about the way that table is always laid that rejoices my heart, even though I might not wish to have my meals set in that pattern every day. The large white cloth may not present the glass-like surface of the town-laundered tablecloth, but at least it is white, and—like the cottage sheets and towels and pillow-cases—it holds the scents of the hillside garden where it was hung out to dry; and though the creases are somewhat ridgy and insistent, and the cloth has been ironed a trifle askew, I know several people who would rather have tea off this tablecloth than the most elaborate dinner and the finest napery that London hotels can produce.

Knives and forks are placed with great precision around the table at intervals, a cup and saucer and plate beside each, the crockery never by any chance matching! In the mathematical centre a loaf of farmhouse bread stands on a kitchen plate, flanked on one side—to the East, as it were—by a large white jug holding a quart of milk, and to the West, by the sugar basin. The big brown teapot stands at the South Pole; and a pudding-basin of new-laid eggs, laid by the widow’s own fowls, are waiting, at the North Pole, to be cooked. A small plate bearing a dinner knife and half a pound of butter (which is never put into the proper butter dish) is placed at the South-West; this is balanced at the South-East by a pot of home-made jam and a tablespoon. Watercress and lettuce may grace the table, though this will be according to the season; but summer or winter, one feature is never omitted, and that is a large kitchen jug full of flowers, gathered by Mrs. Widow from her own garden.

On the day I am writing about, the jug had a brave handful of daffodils, a few sprays of red ribis, dark-brown wallflowers, some small ivy, with some short-stemmed polyanthus suffocating in the centre of the big bunch. And it is wonderful how much you can get crammed into one jug when you try!

Abigail, having none of my weak-minded leanings towards “the primitive,” scornfully whisked the whole lot off the table, as soon as Mrs. Widow had gone back to her own cottage, and re-laid it on modern lines.

We did not hurry over the meal. Virginia got on a lengthy dissertation as to the crying need for fish forks with magnetised prongs that would just draw the bones out of the fish, without any preliminary search and scrutiny. I suggested a radium tip to the prongs—I could think of nothing that seemed more suitable—but she said that might demolish fish and all, in which case one would get no more personal satisfaction out of the creature than one does when having to eat it with its full complement of bones intact.

I then ventured a suggestion that forks made like an ordinary magnet would do, if the fish were given steel drops in regular doses for a few weeks before being caught, so as to get its bones susceptible to the magnet. But Virginia was very lofty, as she always is, about my scientific explanations. I never heard her solution of the problem, because the telegram boy arrived at the moment, with a wire for Abigail, saying that her mother had broken her arm (a genuine case this time!).

So she left by the next train, bewailing the fact that her mother could not get compensation from anyone, as she had given up a post of housekeeper but three months before; if she had only been in the situation still she could have claimed £300 a year for life, Abigail thought—provided the arm could only be induced to remain broken.

Some people, especially her relatives, were always unfortunate, she said, while others were just the reverse. There was a cousin of a friend of hers; he had been out of work for a year or so before he got a job, and then the very first day he met with an accident at the works and had to have his leg amputated; and there he is now, a gentleman for life, comfortably settled on his compensation. Her people never had luck like that. It did seem hard!

“Are you awake?” Virginia’s voice lilted up the stairs next morning.

Awake! why, sleep had been impossible in that cottage for hours past!

For sheer undiluted racket, commend me to two earnest-souled girls, who get up early, and go about with a stealthy tread that creaks every old board in the place, and commune with each other in stage whispers that penetrate through every crack in the floor, all on the pretext of making the fire!

We had decided that we could manage very well ourselves, without sending for anyone to take Abigail’s place; and in order to forestall me, the others had got up about cockcrow, and then began such a whirligig below, that I just lay still and endeavoured to allocate every fresh noise.

They raked and shovelled at the grate, and appeared to be scattering cinders all over the place. They broke up applewood twigs with resounding snaps, and argued as to the amount required to set the fire going. Ursula said you ought to put in handfuls till you got a good crackling blaze; Virginia said that was a childish, brainless way of doing it, to say nothing of the chance of waste; by rights the quantity of twigs employed ought to be strictly in inverse ratio to the quantity of inflammable gas contained in the coal. I dare say I should have heard a good deal more as to the way to assess the ignitable quality of coal, but fortunately the fire burnt up quickly, and they gave their attention to other domestic details.

They dashed about the brass fender; they whacked the blacklead brush against the oven-door at every turn; they set down the zinc pail with a ringing thud, and then scoured the hearth with zeal enough to take off half an inch of stone surface; they polished the brass fire-irons with some concoction of bath-brick and salt which they invented on the spot, as they couldn’t find any metal polish; they banged the hearthrug out of doors till the surrounding hills reverberated with the echoes; they rinked the carpet-sweeper up and down till it made me dizzy to listen; and as this was not thorough enough for Ursula, she also got a short stiff brush and apparently pommelled out any dust that might be under the settle and in other obscure corners; they dusted with equal energy, and then went off into the kitchen to consult about the breakfast menu, while the kettle chose the opportunity to boil all over the fire, thereby raising clouds of white ash that settled on everything, and they said, “Oh, dear! Just look at it.”

Finally, I heard the white cloth being flapped over the table; cups and saucers and plates were chinked and rattled off the dresser; knives and forks and spoons jingled on to the table, and I knew that breakfast was well under way. It was just then that Virginia put her head through the staircase-door to ask—in moderated tones calculated not to disturb me should I still be slumbering!—was I awake?

Hastily hopping out on to the rug, I replied that I was “nearly dressed, and would be down in a minute.”

“No hurry,” she replied artlessly, “we’ve only just come down ourselves, and are going to see to breakfast. But what I want to know is: Where do you keep your frying-pan?”

“Hanging on its proper nail in the kitchen,” I replied.

“Well, it isn’t there.... No, it isn’t on the saucepan shelf, either—we’ve hunted everywhere.... But Abigail didn’t use it yesterday—don’t you remember? We had boiled eggs, and some of that cold ham we brought with us.... All right, we can just as well have eggs again.... That’s true, we shan’t want bacon, with that pork coming for dinner; but be quick, as the kettle’s boiling now.... Oh, it’s not a bit of trouble.”

Whether it was due to the sunshine, or to the tonic of the air, or to the virtuous feeling that always overtakes those who get up early in the morning and disturb everyone else, I cannot say; but at any rate Ursula announced that she intended to start right in, immediately after breakfast, and give the whole cottage a thorough spring cleaning.

The domesticities of the morning seemed to have whetted her appetite for such matters, and she said she felt she must give the place a “Dutch” turn-out, and have every shelf and stool and all the pots and pans scrubbed and scoured and tilted out of doors to dry, as they do in Holland.

Virginia said that she, too, felt a strong force—it might be her sub-conscious self, or she might have a dual personality, she couldn’t say which—within her, impelling her to turn the house inside out.

So I told them to go ahead; I’m the last one to discourage anyone from doing my work for me. I suggested, however, that for the first day they should confine their attentions to the living-rooms downstairs.

Of course, the reader of average intellect will wonder what necessity there could be for any such upheaval, seeing that the place would obviously have been overhauled before we arrived; but this brings me back to Mrs. Widow. “A worthy body and an honest soul,” the Rector said, when he originally recommended her to me, all of which was quite true; but, alas, thoroughness in regard to house-cleaning is not her strong point.

When I first sought her out and broached the subject of the caretaker I was requiring, she listened in a non-committal way. I stated how much a year I was willing to pay—naming an exceptionally good sum—and explained that for this money the house must be looked after in my absence, and be got quite ready for me whenever I should come down, while anything she might do while I was “in residence” would be paid for as an extra.

She showed no indecorous haste to secure the appointment. She merely said she would talk it over with her married daughter, and if she thought any more of it she would let me know. A few hours later she came to me, and said casually that on second thoughts she didn’t mind obliging me. (No one ever “works” for you in our village, they merely “oblige.”) In the interval, however, the whole village had gone into committee on the subject, and everyone’s advice had been sought, and very freely given.

Once more I went through the terms of the agreement, and she said she quite understood. Nevertheless, subsequent events led me to believe that she regarded the annual wage in the light of a retaining fee only, since most of the work is always left to be done after I arrive, when it will have to be paid for as a separate transaction if it is more than Abigail can wrestle with.

At the same time I can truly endorse the Rector’s tribute to her honesty. If I were to strew the floor with sovereigns or diamond rings, I know I should find them on the mantelpiece when next I returned, and she never annexes anything permanently.

But the fact that one has a village-wide reputation for honesty need not detract from one’s worldly prosperity—so long as one can borrow with light-hearted frequency, and borrow for indefinite periods, too! Mrs. Widow has reduced borrowing to a fine art, but her honesty is demonstrated by the fact that I have never known her decline to return any of my possessions; indeed, so scrupulous is she that she will bring back the tin of metal polish, when it is empty, explaining that she was quite sure I wanted it to be used rather than wasted!

Abigail invariably spends the first couple of days at the cottage in skirmishing and reclaiming missing articles. Knowing all this, I was not surprised when I heard the frying-pan was minus; I also knew that time would reveal other vacancies.

Had it been July or August, the preserving-pan—a family treasure—would have been gone, too. Mrs. Widow is always very solicitous for its welfare about fruit-gathering time; she says damp would easily hurt a really good preserving-pan, so she takes it home with her to keep it dry. Yet the poor thing will be left to face the winter in my kitchen with never a thought bestowed on its delicate constitution.

And it is just at jam-making time, too, that my kitchen scales and weights require the ameliorated atmosphere of Mrs. Widow’s cottage; my own kitchen, with the midsummer sun upon it all day, being obviously far too cold and damp for such highly-strung bric-À-brac as one pound and half-pound weights.

A town acquaintance once said to Virginia: “I suppose Miss Klickmann goes down to her cottage for poetic and literary inspiration?”

“Oh, dear, no!” was the reply. “She simply goes down, as a mere matter of feminine curiosity, to see what is left.”

“Where do you keep your tea-towels?” Ursula began, as she prepared to wash up the breakfast things.

“There ought to be a pile in one of the drawers of the kitchen table,” I said. “They are not there? Oh, well, they’ll come back presently!”

While we were speaking, a small girl appeared at the side door, holding in one hand a basket containing a nice chunk of pork (wrapped in one of my tea-towels), and in the other hand my mincing-machine. This was Mrs. Widow’s grandchild.

“If you please, ma’am, father’s killed the pig, and mother thought you might like just a little piece of griskin, and mother’s been taking care of the mincer so’s it shan’t get rusty.”

An exchange of courtesies having been effected by means of a bottle of pear-drops, the small maid departed with her empty basket; the mincer was restored to its proper niche in the pantry, and we were at least one tea-towel to the good.

I might mention that Mrs. Widow’s married daughter had recently acquired considerable local fame by making “faggots,” which were in great demand. You know the dish?—a combination of liver, pork, sage and onions, etc., baked in squares. Other people in the district made faggots, too, but none could rival hers, and orders came to her from many of the big houses.

“No one ever manages to get them chopped so beautifully fine as she does,” said Miss Bretherton when recommending them to my notice. “I advise you to try them.”

Still, whatever obligation there may have been was offset, surely, by the piece of pork. The griskin is the lean portion of some part of the quadruped’s anatomy after the fat has been cut off for curing. This joint—which we never see in London—is always popular with us in the country; so popular, that I had ordered a piece only the day before from the butcher. It was just the season when people were killing their pigs, and the butcher had suggested griskin. Still, it was easy to put the extra piece in salt, and the flavour would only be improved thereby; my one regret was that the butcher had sent a very large joint, when I had particularly mentioned that I only wanted a little piece.

I had originally intended to devote the day to gardening, not to house-cleaning.

“Of course you keep a permanent gardener?” people inquire of me. “I see; a general handy man; it comes to the same thing; he will save you all trouble.”

Those of my acquaintances who have never had a place out of town to look after, always conclude that country districts fairly bristle with capable, willing men, and poor-but-honest, hard-working women, all of them anxious to do my work—and at a merely nominal wage too; whereas one has the utmost trouble to get either man or woman to do a day’s work at any price. I pay the handy man the same wage per day as I pay my thoroughly experienced London gardener; and he can only manage to spare me a small amount of his time at that price.

He knows very little about flowers, but he weeds in an enlightened manner, and he understands the elementary principles underlying vegetable growing on a small scale. For the most part the villagers bother very little about their gardens, only cultivating just sufficient ground for their immediate needs.

The unenlightened local method of dealing with weeds is this. He-who-is-paid-to-garden leaves them to grow to a fair height—especially if no one is likely to be there for some weeks to see them. Then, when they have absorbed a generous amount of nourishment from the ground, and generally suffocated everything small within their reach, he merely turns the soil over, with the weeds on the underneath side, draws a rake over the surface, and presto! you have a nice tidy bed.

This method is known as “digging in.”

Of course, in twenty-four hours the good-natured things start to poke cheerful noses through the soil again. But that doesn’t matter. Life is long, and the gardener is paid to clear them away again.

There is an optional method, referred to as “cleaning up the beds.” In that case, he leaves the weeds to grow higher, more especially in beds that are full of promising seedlings; in fact, he doesn’t worry about them at all until there is sudden and urgent reason why the garden should present a kempt, well-cared-for appearance.

Then, the weeds being so healthy and luxuriant that they would raise the face of creation a couple of inches if he attempted to dig them in, he simplifies matters by removing the surface of the earth, weeds and seedlings and all; this he wheels away in a barrow, perchance to lay it down on some rough and rubbly bit of lane that the road-menders have ignored.

When she-who-pays arrives, all expectation, and inquires for the missing seedlings, the tiller of the soil shakes his head lugubriously, and refers to the recent plague of slugs (or thunderstorms, or frost, or east winds, or whatever other natural phenomena seem most convincing), and says he had a hard job to save what is left in the garden—this last in a martyr-like tone of voice, indicating that though all his self-sacrificing labour is passed over unrecognised, he himself has the virtuous consciousness of having at least done his simple duty, and what man can do more!

Now I come to think of it, there are many different ways of gardening; that must be why it is always interesting to go round the garden with the gardener. When I say different ways, I don’t mean such trifling divergencies of method as landscape gardens versus intensive culture, or tomatoes under glass versus gloxinias. These primarily concern the pocket; the differences that interest me are temperamental.

There is Miss Bretherton, for instance, a most diligent and vigilant gardener. And yet she never seems to me to get much genuine, unalloyed pleasure out of her garden; she never basks in its beauty—though for the matter of that Miss Bretherton never basks anywhere! A middle-aged woman who does her duty by a scattered parish, conscientiously and thoroughly and unremittingly, never has time for that sort of dissipation! Miss Bretherton deals with her garden much as she deals with the parish. At best it is a case of striving to lead reluctant feet in the paths of virtue, while by far the greater part of her efforts is an unflagging wrestle with original sin.

A walk round the rectory garden is usually like this. Miss Bretherton always picks up a pair of gardening scissors and a basket mechanically as she steps out.

“What a wonderful glow of colour!” I exclaim, as I bury my nose in a magnificent Gloire de Dijon.

“But it is such a wretched thing for sending up suckers,” Miss Bretherton replies. “I’m always digging them up. Why, I declare there is one a foot high,” giving it a drastic prod with the scissors. “I thought I’d cut them all away yesterday”; more prods till the sucker is finally unearthed.

“And aren’t those hollyhocks tall!”

“Not nearly so fine as they would have been if that red-spotty blight hadn’t attacked them. Just look at these leaves!”

Snip, snip, snip! Off came a dozen or so.

I stop to admire the fairy flowers in the Virginia stock, rosy carmine, lemon and mauve, just opening in the sun.

“I don’t think there is anything sweeter for a border,” I remark.

“The trouble with Virginia stock is that it so soon looks untidy,” Miss Bretherton says dispiritedly. “Do what I will, I can’t keep the edges tidy once that goes off bloom. I pull it all out at last, and then that leaves a bare rough-dried looking space with nothing in it.”

I praise the white lilies—such a stately row of spotless beauty.

“I wish I could do something to hide that raggedness at the bottom of the stems. They do look so shabby. Excuse me, I see that Canterbury bell has withered off—that’s the worst of them. They all go at once so suddenly, and look such a withered mass. I must cut off those dead blooms, it may send up a second crop. But there, if it does, they will only be small bells!”

I’m not sure whether the handy man’s method is temperamental, but I know it is very conversational, if you can call it a conversation when he insists on doing the whole of it himself. He is an elderly bachelor; and Mrs. Widow once explained the situation to me:

“You see, he ain’t never had no wife to talk his head off for him, so he talks it off for hisself.”

I give him copious instructions whenever I leave, which he promises to carry out; but no matter what I may have asked him to do—whether it was to nail up the yellow roses over the front door, or to set lavender cuttings—it all works out to the same thing in the end: it is only the vegetables that are deemed worthy of mention. The flowers are just tolerated because—well, because I keep on putting them in the ground, and you can’t expect practical common-sense from a woman anyhow! But after all, it isn’t reasonable to expect an untrained cottager to make a garden different from those he sees around.

You can understand, however, that we are usually kept pretty busy from the moment we arrive till the hour we go away.

But this particular morning gardening was out of the question. The two girls started with the spring-cleaning on most vigorous lines. Virginia said the hygienic way was to place everything that was movable out-of-doors, so that, scientifically speaking, the sun’s rays could penetrate every fibre and tissue, and neutralise the harmful germs that would assuredly be lurking by the million in every stick and shred in a house as neglected as that one had been.

I objected to my cherished possessions being referred to as sticks and shreds, and I said so, with emphasis.

Ursula said if we were going to argue at that length it would be the August Bank Holiday before we got things back in their place again. For her part, she regarded all that germ-business as a harmless fairy-tale that was very suitable and safe reading for a mild intellect like Virginia’s. All the same, she quite agreed that everything ought to be put outside, so as to give more elbow-room indoors; moreover, things that were washed and scrubbed would, of course, dry quicker in the sun.

So out they all came!

Then we saw how badly the boards around the carpet needed re-staining, and we dispatched Virginia to the village to see what she could get in the way of oak or walnut floor-stain.

She returned with a large bottle of rheumatic lotion. Miss Jarvis, who keeps the village shop, hadn’t a bottle of stain left, but Virginia turned over everything she had and decided on the lotion, as it was thickish and a nice rich brown. She bore it off, Miss Jarvis beseeching her to remember it was for outward application only.

It wasn’t bad, only it flavoured the air rather strongly for days.

Ursula’s labours were bearing much fruit. To look at the scene outside the cottage, you might have thought a distraint had been made on the contents for rent. Chairs, tables, meat-safes, crockery, saucepans, oak chests, pictures, books, the warming-pan, brass candlesticks, coal-scuttles, fenders, were all basking unblushingly, and in the direst confusion, in the sunshine.

What pained me most was to notice how the furniture that had looked delightfully appropriate in the subdued lights of indoors, became appallingly shabby when subjected to the glare of day. I remarked that if I had confronted the things on a London burglar’s barrow, I should neither have recognised them nor have desired to claim them.

Ursula tried to reassure me by reminding me that the things were mostly very old, and antique things are invariably shabby as well as very valuable. Virginia contributed the consoling information that she had noticed, whenever people moved, they always left their good furniture behind in the empty house, for they only removed shabby-looking things.

I tried to feel duly proud of my possessions once more; but all the same I suggested that we should hurry on as fast as we could; I had a strong conviction that if any of my county neighbours called, they would probably be more impressed with the disreputable appearance of my belongings than with their priceless antiquity.

Of course, people came while we were still in chaos, as I knew they would. The first to arrive was Miss Primkins, who apologised for calling at such an hour, but she wanted to consult me on a private matter, she was so very worried. Was I busy? (with an inquiring glance at the all-pervading marine-store). Naturally I said I wasn’t.

The difficulty was to find a seat indoors to accommodate us while we talked; it wasn’t warm enough, as yet, to sit in the open. I found two chairs in the china pantry—a fair-sized apartment with a big window, even though it is called a pantry—and here we established ourselves, Miss Primkins reiterating how kind she thought it of me to receive her in this homely way, treating her just like one of the family. I tried to make her understand, however, that, as a general rule, it was not the family custom to foregather in the crockery cupboard!

She was a long while getting to the cause of her worry. I wonder why it is that so many women, when they start out to say anything, wander about and deviate into innumerable side channels and backwaters before they get to the point?—but there, I do myself, so we won’t follow up that line of thought.

Eventually, it transpired that when war was declared, and the attendant moratorium, Miss Primkins had hidden away what little gold she had in the bottom of a coffee canister, with the coffee put in again artlessly on top. Since then she had added to her store of gold, till at last she had £12 in all.

On hearing this I scented the trouble, and began to commiserate: “You don’t mean to say someone has stolen it! Who could it have been?”

“Oh, no; it hasn’t been stolen—though sometimes I almost wish—but there, I oughtn’t to say that! No, the difficulty is that now I don’t know how to get rid of it! I never thought there was any harm in putting a little by, in case anything happened, till I saw in the papers that someone said” (lowering her voice) “that those who hoard gold are traitors to their country, and” (in a still more shocked tone) “actually helping Germany! I’d never had any such idea! Why, it’s the very last thing I should wish to do!

“So I started unhoarding at once and took a sovereign when next I went out to pay my little grocery bill. Miss Jarvis wasn’t in the shop herself—she wouldn’t have been so rude!—but her assistant said, ‘Well, I never! Doesn’t it seem odd to see a sovereign again! I can’t tell you when I saw one last. I didn’t know there was a solitary one left in the village! Wherever did you get it from, Miss Primkins?’

“Do you know, I went hot and cold all over; didn’t know what to do with myself, for fear she should guess I’d been hoarding and helping the country to be a traitor—no, I mean helping Germany to be—well—you understand. I just said quietly, with all the composure I could muster, ‘I chanced to have it in my purse,’ because, after all, it wasn’t her business, was it?”

I agreed that it wasn’t.

“Then I thought I would change half a sovereign—that would be smaller and look less hoardingish—at the station, as I was going into Chepstow to get some more wool for those socks for Queen Mary. Would you believe it?—the station-master said—you know his jocular way—‘Why, Miss Primkins, what bank have you been robbing? I haven’t had my hand crossed with gold, I don’t know when! I’d like to keep it myself, for luck, only the Prime Minister would be down on me for hoarding, I suppose.’

“My knees shook so I could hardly get into the train. I decided I wouldn’t let anyone see another bit of it; yet actually, when I was in Mrs. Davis’s shop and getting out the money to pay for the wool, if I didn’t take out another half-sovereign in mistake for a sixpence!—I was so unnerved, I suppose—and she said, ‘Just fancy seeing a half-sovereign again! I thought they were all called in. Wherever did you light on that, Miss Primkins?’

“Now you can understand I’m at my wits’ end to know what to do with that money. I can’t spend it without everyone knowing. If I put it in my savings bank book, and so get it back to the Government that way, I have to hand it over the counter at the post office. You know so much about business, can you suggest anything?”

I immediately offered to give the nervous, worried lady Treasury notes in exchange.

“Oh, but I couldn’t let you incriminate yourself like that,” she protested, “kind as it is of you. There’s your reputation as well as mine to be thought of.”

I explained, however, that it was easier to dispose of an accusing golden sovereign in London without arousing the suspicions of the populace than it was in the country, and I said I was sure my bank manager would oblige me by receiving the gold for the good of the country, knowing me to be an honest and respectable Englishwoman.

“I never thought to be so thankful to see the last of a sovereign,” she said, as she tucked the paper notes into her handbag. “I’ve scarcely slept all this week. Why, Germany is the very last thing I would help!”

Mrs. Widow came in at the gate as Miss Primkins went out; and, seeing the house all turned out of windows, looked her surprise at such goings on! She carried a frying-pan, a long-handled broom, a double milk-boiler, an egg-beater, and a lemon-squeezer, and explained that they had kept beautifully dry in her kitchen, whereas they would have been ruined if left to get damp in an empty house. Parenthetically, she hoped I would excuse her having used half a dozen lemons I had left in the pantry last time; she was afraid they would not keep; also some sugar in a tin, that she dare say might have melted away—and it seemed cruel to waste it considering the price of sugar.

Of course I said she was quite welcome.

And, by the way, was I wanting a jar of lemon curd? Her daughter had made some that was really lovely, and she would not mind obliging me by selling me a jar.

While she was describing the distinctive merits of the lemon curd, and relating what the lady of the manor had said in praise of the jar she had purchased, a man-servant arrived from the Manor House with a note and a basket, which he handed to me (with a very superior air that gave me to understand he was not in the habit of carrying baskets, and was only doing so now as a patriotic act in war time) across the kitchen table that stood in the path and blocked his further progress. While I read the note, he fixed his eyes upon his boots, and apparently looked neither to the right hand nor to the left; yet I know that he catalogued every item of those wretched domestic oddments that were decorating the lawn and garden path.

Mrs. Widow, possessed of a natural curiosity that it is hard to circumvent, was loath to leave without a glimpse of the contents of the basket. But Virginia got her off by escorting her to the gate, and telling her that I had not been very well in town.

“Ah! anybody could see that, miss,” said Mrs. Widow feelingly, glancing in my direction. “Don’t she just look ’aggard!” And then, seeing a look of surprise on the face of Virginia—who distinctly resented my being described as haggard—she added hurriedly, “Leastways, I mean ’andsome ’aggard, of course, miss.”

The lady of the manor had written to say that a cold was keeping her indoors for a day or two; but in the meanwhile, as they were busy curing bacon at the home farm, she had had them cut just a little piece of griskin, which she was sure I should like, and was having it sent up at once, etc.

The superior person left, carrying in one hand an envelope addressed to his mistress, which contained all the thanks I could muster, and in the other a note to be left at the village shop, asking Miss Jarvis to send me up a large block of salt.

“What shall you do with all the pork?” Ursula inquired.

“I haven’t the faintest idea!” I said. “I can’t bestow any of it on the poor because, no matter which piece I gave away, Mrs. Widow’s married daughter would be sure it was her gift I had spurned, and would feel duly slighted.”

Virginia broke in upon us breathlessly, her arms full of pasteboard, soup tureen, hearthrug, hassock, and fire-irons, which she had hastily gathered up from the path. “The Rector’s outside in the lane talking to some children.”

“And has he any basket in his hand?” asked Ursula.

“No, he only appears to be carrying his umbrella.”

“Thank goodness!” said Ursula fervently, as she put the third flank of griskin in the coldest larder.

By this time the next caller was coming up the path, and though I could invite him to take a seat in one of the armchairs that were now inside, anything like order had not yet been evolved from the chaos.

The Rector is loved by rich and poor alike, by reason of his unselfishness, his absolute sincerity and “other-worldliness.” He is now well on in years, but neither distance nor weather keeps him from visiting regularly all in his wide-scattered parish. His calls are always welcomed, though I admit I should have preferred to see him any day other than the one in question.

“I have come with a message from my niece,” he began. “She told me to say that she is sending up a small trifle—a little housewifely notion of hers—for your kind acceptance. She thought you might find it add a little variety to the cottage menu. As a matter of fact, the rectory pig has gone the way of most pigs! And we said, the moment we heard you had arrived, that we must get you to sample the home-grown article, so she is sending you up just a little piece of—— Ah, here it is, I expect”—as the Rector’s handy man came in at the gate, carrying the inevitable basket; and though the contents were wrapped up in a spotless white cloth, there was no need for one to be told what he was bringing.

I tried to be as truly grateful as ever I could; I told myself I must not think about the gift itself, but must keep my mind focused on the kind thought that had prompted the gift. Nevertheless, the basket seemed very heavy as I carried it into the larder, and added one more joint to the goodly collection already assembled. And as I went back into the living-room, I heard Virginia warbling outdoors:

There is something singularly exasperating about other people’s joyousness, when it is purchased at one’s own expense!

We were restoring the last jug to its proper hook on the dresser, when once more we saw Miss Primkins toiling up the steep garden path.

She really felt terribly ashamed to be intruding on me again; but she had just read in the paper that the Prime Minister now said everyone must save, and no one who was a true patriot would spend more than was absolutely necessary. Now what was the difference between hoarding and saving? She did so want to do the right thing; it was so little she could do to help her country. Yet, for the life of her, she couldn’t make out whether she ought to save that £12 or spend it.

Would I mind explaining it to her? She never could understand anything Prime Ministers, or people like that, said nowadays; so different from what it was in her young days. When there was only Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone everything was so sensible and straightforward. Her father used to say: “Always believe Lord Salisbury; never believe Mr. Gladstone”—or else it was the other way round, she wasn’t sure which. Whereas now, what with radicals, and coalitions, and territorials, and boards of this, that, and the other, her brain almost gave way trying to find out who anybody was.

“And when at last I think I’ve got it straightened out, I find there’s a lot of ‘antis,’ and it’s just the opposite thing they say you ought or ought not to do; or else you have to begin at the other end and work backwards. What a lot those Germans have to answer for!”

I offered my own simple political creed for her guidance: “When the King or Lord Kitchener says anything, then I know it’s all right. When they hold their tongues, I know it’s equally all right; and the rest I don’t worry about!”

She said I had expressed her own views entirely, only she never thought to put it so concisely as that. What a wonderful thing it was to have a brain like mine that grasped things so clearly! She should just go on being economical as her mother had always taught her to be, until the King—or, possibly, Queen Mary—said anything definite on the subject, then people would know where they were.

“At least, you aren’t the only one bothered about the question of hoarding,” I said. “I’m also wrestling with the problem. Look here,” and I led the way to the larder and gave details. “I’ve been wondering whether, as I relieved you of your hoard, you could assist me out with mine! Will you accept a piece of griskin, merely to get it off my premises?”

Miss Primkins was almost tearful in her thanks. “It’s so strange you should have thought to offer this,” she said in a sort of broken hesitation, “because I’m going to Cardiff by the first train to-morrow to see my sisters. I always like to take them a little something, you understand. They have big families, and business is bad now; and, of course, coming from the country—— Only eggs are so dear, and fowls such a price; and just now—well, you know—dividends aren’t coming in as they did, and I’ve my three houses standing empty, and such a big bill for repairs, and—— Only, of course,” rallying herself, “I’m heaps better off than those poor Belgians; but oh, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for your kindness. You see, I was keeping that £12 by me in case I should be ill—we never know, do we?—or to meet the rent if I should run short. Please pardon my speaking of these things, only—you understand,” and the poor lady blushed to think she should have let herself refer to finances.

Yes, I understood. Rumour had already reached me that Miss Primkins had only used three hundredweight of coal through the whole of the winter (of course, in our village everybody knows how much everybody else buys of everything), and she had been seen out in the woods gathering sticks. She had cut her milk down to a half-pint a day, and that was consumed by Rehoboam (the cat). She seldom had any meat, and practised all sorts of pitiful little economies, living chiefly on the vegetables she had grown in her garden. But she never let anything interfere with a coin going into the Sunday offertory, or her knitting for the troops; and she gave a donation to the Red Cross Fund as gladly as anyone.

It makes one’s heart ache to think how many poor elderly ladies there are up and down the land, who have lost what at best was but a very modest meed of comfort, in the present financial upheaval; and these have additional anxiety in the fact that it would be torture to them were their poverty paraded before the world. They have not the physical strength to engage in national work, though their spirits are valiant enough for any self-sacrifice. So, since it is all they can do for their country, they shoulder their burdens uncomplainingly, keeping a frail body alive on sugarless tea and sparsely-buttered bread, while they knit long, long thoughts into socks and comforters, if by any means they can raise the money to purchase the wool.

No Fund is large enough to embrace such as these; no charity could ever meet their case. All the same they are part of the bulwark strength of England, these dear, faithful women, who in old age and feeble health hide their own privations beneath a brave exterior, willing to make any personal sacrifice rather than Might should triumph over Right.

“Miss Primkins!” I exclaimed, when I heard of the Cardiff visit, “I believe you’re the good fairy who, I used to think, lived at the entrance to the waterfall cave under the hill; and I’m certain you’ve been sent up here for the explicit purpose of relieving me of that meat! If you’re going to Cardiff, it’s your clear duty to take a griskin to each of your sisters—hearty-eating boys, did you say? Good! That will rid me of two! Well, you’ll find them at the station in the morning waiting for the 9 o’clock train—we’ll do them up to look like hothouse grapes and pineapples.”

Of course she protested, but I remained firm; as I told her, I wasn’t going to let slip such a heaven-sent opportunity to get those joints transported for life.

When Virginia and Ursula put them in the railway carriage next morning, she asked if they would mind, as they passed her house on their way home, seeing if they could find Rehoboam; he hadn’t come back for his milk, and she couldn’t wait for him. They would find the door-key under the fourth flower-pot on the right hand window-sill; and if he was waiting on the step (his usual custom about half-past nine) would they be so kind as to give him the milk that was in the larder? Then she need not worry any more about him.

They found Rehoboam as per schedule, and gave him the milk. They couldn’t help seeing that there was only a small piece of cold suet pudding, a little blackberry jam, and one thin slice of bacon in the larder.

When they got back we set to work on a cooking crusade; and isn’t there a delightful sense of freedom when you can do what you like in your own kitchen, with no Abigail oversighting your operations! We cooked some griskin, and made pastry and cakes, and put some eggs into pickle. (Do you know these? hard-boiled eggs shelled when cold and put into pickle vinegar; ready in a couple of days.)

Then when it got to within an hour of train time, the girls went down and lit Miss Primkins’ fire, taking down a scuttle of coals for the purpose; her outside coal-cellar being locked fortunately gave us an excuse for not using up hers. They also took some milk, three of my finest potatoes, and other things.

By the time the train arrived, and Miss Primkins was on a tired homeward walk, the kettle was singing on the hob; three floury potatoes—strained, but keeping hot in the saucepan—stood beside the kettle; the supper table was laid with cold griskin, a jam tart, and a small spice cake, while in the larder stood two sausage-rolls, a seed cake, and a jar containing three eggs in course of pickling.

Of course the girls couldn’t resist ticketing the things “Virginia made this, so be cautious! (Signed) Ursula,” and similar nonsense, hoping thereby to divert Miss Primkins from the bald truth, viz., that we were trying to smuggle something into a bare cupboard!

Then, after rounding up Rehoboam, and placing him on the hearthrug to give an air of social welcome, they locked the door, putting the key under the fourth flower-pot, and skipped up the hill again by the woodland path, as Miss Primkins turned into her little garden gate.