A Sovereign Remedy. Flora Annie Webster Steel
Ted, looking through the inn window as they waited for tea, saw it, and the problem as to why it had been built so far away from the village, a problem which Morris Pugh had evaded, recurred to him.
"I should say, because the site--belonged to some one," said Ned coolly. "These things will happen--even to Boards. They are part of our commercial standard--caveat emptor! And in this case, the purchaser being the public--well, we don't think of the public as our neighbour. No! the public is an ill dog in temperance Wales!--especially amongst the Calvinistic Methodists. The parson, though, is a good sort--he didn't fancy the subject!"
"Not as he fancied the Welsh motto over the door," laughed Ted. "By George! how he let out about foreign languages and Wales being a conquered country. I had to drop reason and the Norman invasion, or there'd have been a row. He was awfully like Ffluellen--what a genius Shakespeare was."
"Yes! He understood, and you don't. I tell you, Wales is the most Rip-van-winkleish place in the world. You can go to sleep in a fifteenth-century farm and wake up the day after to-morrow in an Intermediate School. I've been in India, and it reminds me awfully of the National Congress. But I like it, though it is fatiguing to any one with a hankering after fact. Still, if there was a little more water--there is none in summer time, you know--and a little less rain, a little more right, and a trifle less righteousness it would do very well."
"Righteousness!" echoed Ted, "there's enough of that, anyhow. Two, four, six, eight, eight belfries to how many souls in the village?--four hundred all told?"
"That's only four chapels; the others are Sunday schools, I'll bet--'the Macleods must have a boat o' their ain.' Then there's the church--that ruin up yonder--it'll have a school too----"
But Ted's attention was diverted. "I say," he remarked, "that's a ripping girl!"
She had come out of a cottage a little way from the inn to intercept Morris Pugh and was engaging him in a lively conversation, despite his hurry. She was tall, dressed in black that glinted, and the fact that her hair was in curling pins did not interfere with her very voyante good looks.
"H'm!" remarked Ned, coming over to see, "reminds me of last Monday--I mean Bank Holiday! Doesn't she?"
The sarcasm was just, but it brought a faintly-annoyed flush to his companion's face. He knew himself to be a lower bred man, and the other Edward Cruttenden had a trick of reminding him of this and of certain other facts which, given fair choice, he would probably have forgotten.
So the village was left to its own devices till tea was over, when he took his pipe to the window again.
"Barring the prices, which whip an International Exhibition," he remarked, "this would be a jolly headquarters spot. That big hill--'Eye of the World,' the parson called it, didn't he?--is ripping!"
This time the word lost its inherent triviality before the dignity of those receding curves of sunshine shown by shadow, which swept up to the light-smitten crest of the great mountain.
"Personally," remarked Ned drily, "I find the view of the smithy more--Now, don't!--It isn't the least good fussing--it's the village tea-time, and not all the king's horses----"
But Ted and his bad words were off hammering at the closed doors, and finally running the smith to earth, having tea comfortably on an oak dresser hung with lustre jugs. It was a very small, but highly decorated cottage, this of the smith, showing uneducated artistic cravings in many things, in a harmonium, endless cheap photograph frames, china enormities, a few glazed certificates in Welsh to one "Myfanwy Jones," and here and there a priceless bit of Staffordshire ware.
Then ensued a deadlock. For the smith, scenting coercion, flared up instantly in Welsh, and Ted, conscious of breach of contract, grew abusive in English, till suddenly from above, came a full, high voice. "I will come down when I have finished dressing. Pray, sir, accommodate yourself with a cup of tea."
Then followed shrill Welsh exordiums to the smith, which resulted in a cheerful smile as he reached down another cup.
Ted took it, also a piece of bread and butter, feeling he could do nothing else, and as he sat waiting, the feminine voice continued upstairs a conversation which apparently had been going on when he had burst into the cottage, though he had been too ill-used to notice it.
"If you do not want the hat, Alicia Edwards, you can oblige by replacing in the box; but you will be dowdy beside the other girls at choir holiday, and Mervyn will not look at you twice. No, indeed! And it is but one-and-twenty shillings. Dirt cheap! Be wise and buy. See, you shall have it for a pound, and you can pay when you marry Mervyn."
"Mary!" choked a softer, more emotional voice. "Ah! I only want him to look at me. Ah, Myfanwy I Do you think he could----"
"If you do not care for the height in front you can wear it hindside before. It is even just so fashionable," went on the first voice, regardless of sentiment. "Put it on, child, and don't be so foolish. What is a pound, and you a pupil teacher? There! You look beautiful. Now, give me my hat pins, I must go to that man downstairs."
A frou-frou of silk petticoats on the ladder stairs which led up from a corner of the living room made Ted look round.
He saw, first, a pair of many-strapped, beaded black shoes with superlatively high heels, next, an interval of trim, black openwork stockings, finally, in a tourbillon of laced silk flouncings, over which it let down a trailing black satin dress, a vision, in which Ted at once recognised the girl in curling pins; or rather her apotheosis, for she was now glorious both within and without.
Her beautiful figure was literally cased in a tight bodice, which looked as if she must have been melted and run into it ere it could be so guiltless of wrinkles. The heavy lace yoke with which it was made showed the whiteness of her skin beneath it; a whiteness which held its own against the double row of false pearls about her neck. For the rest she was planned, laid out, developed in exact accordance with a Paris model in a shop.
In one hand she held a most irresponsible creation, which Ted almost diagnosed as a hat, though it had neither crown nor brim, and in the other, a perfect sheaf of long, black-headed pins.
She smiled at him with frank favour and, saying carelessly, "The smith, my father, will attend to you, sir, when he has had tea," passed on to a little mirror on the wall, placed the irresponsible creation on her tumultuous yet disciplined waves of hair in the very last position of which any sane creature would have dreamt, and proceeded, apparently, to stick the long pins through her head.
Seeing, however, in the glass Ted's face of angry consternation, she flashed round on him tartly yet condescendingly.
"It is no use trying to hurry Dinas. They are country people, not like London or Blackborough. This is not Williams and Edwards, or such like place, I can tell you."
The name of the biggest drapery firm in Blackborough gave Ted a clue to some of his perplexity.
"I see," he said slowly, "that's how you come to be--you are in the shop, of course, aren't you?"
She was by this time dexterously rolling back her veil preparatory to tieing it behind, her chin held down to keep it in position. So her dark eyes had full play as she retorted that she was. Second, in fact, in the mantle department--because of her figure. She displayed it lavishly in manipulating her veil, smiling the while at her own consciousness of perfection.
Ted smiled also. The big, bold, beautiful animal was distinctly fetching. He said something to that effect which made her giggle.
"You should pass your time coming to choir practice," she said, challenging him again quite frankly, when, after much shrill Welsh with her father, the latter stuck to two hours as his shortest limit for repair. "I sing in chapel when I am on holiday still; my music-master was the great Taleisin--that is his bard's name, of course--and Alicia Edwards, here, has won so many times in competition."
The last sentence introduced a girl who had just come downstairs, with a display of white lace stockings and thereinafter a blue dress surmounted by an extremely smart hat, possibly