When all goes ill, then turn to he.’
‘Well, all’s not gone ill yet,’ said Elfrida, wriggling her neck in its prickly muslin tucker. ‘Let’s go and see the witch.’
‘You’d best take her something – a screw of sugar she’d like, and a pinch of tea.’
‘Why, she’d not say “Thank you” for it,’ said Edred, looking at the tiny packets.
‘I expect you’ve forgotten,’ said cook gently, ‘that tea’s ten shillings a pound and sugar’s gone up to three-and-six since the war.’
‘What war?’
‘The French war. You haven’t forgotten we’re at war with Boney and the French, and the bonfire we had up at the church when the news came of the drubbing we gave them at Trafalgar, and poor dear Lord Nelson and all? And your grandfather reading out about it to them from the “George” balcony, and all the people waiting to cheer, and him not able to get it out for choking pride and because of Lord Nelson – God bless him! – and the people couldn’t get their cheers out neither, for the same cause, and everyone blowing their noses and shaking each other’s hands like as if it was a mad funeral?’
‘How splendid!’ said Elfrida. ‘But we don’t remember it.’
‘Nor you don’t remember how you killed all the white butterflies last year because you said they were Frenchies in their white coats? And the birching you got, for cruelty to dumb animals, his lordship said. You howled for an hour together after it, so you did.’
‘I’m glad we’ve forgotten that, anyhow,’ said Edred.
‘Gracious!’ said the cook. ‘Half after eleven, and my eggs not so much as broke for my pudding. Off you go with your letter. Don’t you tell anyone else about you forgetting. And then you come home along by Dering’s Spinney – and go see old Betty. Speak pretty to her and give her the tea and sugar, and keep your feet crossed under your chair if she asks you to sit down. And I’ll give you an old knife-blade apiece to put in your pockets; she can’t do nothing if you’ve got steel on you. And get her to take it off – the ill-wishing, I mean. And don’t let her know you’ve got steel; they don’t like to think you’ve been beforehand with them.’
So the children went down across the fields to the ‘George,’ and the bean-flowers smelt as sweet, and the skylarks sang as clearly, and the sun and the sky were just as golden and blue as they had been last week. And last week was really a hundred years on in the future. And yet it was last week too – from where they were. Time is a very confusing thing, as the children remarked to each other more than once.
They found the ‘George’ half-way up Arden village, a stately, great house shaped like an E, with many windows and a great porch with a balcony over it. They gave their letter to a lady in a round cap who sat sewing in a pleasant room where there were many bottles and kegs, and rows of bright pewter ale-pots, and little fat mugs to measure other things with, and pewter plates on a brown dresser. There were greyhounds, too, all sprawling, legs and shoulders and tails entangled together like a bunch of dead eels, before the widest hearth the children had ever seen. They hurried away the moment they had given the letter. A coach, top-heavy with luggage, had drawn up in front of the porch, and as they went out they saw the ostlers leading away the six smoking horses. Edred felt that he must see the stables, so they followed, and the stables were as big as the house, and there were horses going in and horses going out, and hay and straw, and ostlers with buckets and ost1ers with harness, and stalls and loose-boxes beyond counting, and bustle and hurry beyond words.
‘How ever many horses have you got?’ said Elfrida, addressing a man who had not joined in the kindly chorus of ‘Hulloa, little ’uns!’ that greeted the children. So she judged him to be a new-comer. As he was.
‘Two-and-fifty,’ said the man.
‘What for?’ Elfrida asked.
‘Why, for the coaches, and the post-shays, and the King’s messengers, for sure,’ the man answered. ‘How else’d us all get about the country, and get to hear the newses, if it wasn’t for the stable the “George” keeps?’
And then the children remembered that this was the time before railways and telegrams and telephones.
It is always difficult to remember exactly where one is when one happens to get into a century that is not one’s own.
Edred would have liked to stay all day watching the busyness of everyone and the beautifulness of the horses, but Elfrida dragged him away.
They had to find the witch, she reminded him; and in a dreadful tumble-down cottage, with big holes in its roof of rotten thatch, they did find her.
She was exactly like the pictures of witches in story books, only she had not a broomstick or a high-pointed hat. She had instead a dirty cap that had once been white, and a rusty gown that had once been black, and a streaky shawl that might once, perhaps, have been scarlet. But nobody could be sure of that now. There was a black cat sitting on a very dirty wooden settle, and the old woman herself sat on a rickety three-legged stool, her wrinkled face bent over a speckled hen which she was nursing in her lap and holding gently in her yellow, wrinkled hands.
As soon as Edred caught sight of her through the crooked doorway, he stopped. ‘I’m not going in,’ he said, ‘what’s the good? We know jolly well she hasn’t bewitched us. And if we go cheeking her she may, and then we shall be in a nice hole.’
‘There’s the tea and sugar,’ said Elfrida.
‘You just give it her and come away. I’ll wait for you by the stile.’
So Elfrida went into the cottage alone, and said ‘Good morning’ in rather a frightened way.
‘I’ve brought you some tea and sugar,’ she said, and stood waiting for the ‘Thank you,’ without which it would not be polite to say ‘Good morning’ and to go away.
The ‘Thank you’ never came. Instead, the witch stopped stroking the hen, and said:
‘What for? I’ve not done you no ’arm.’
‘No,’ said Elfrida. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’
‘Then what have you brought it for?’
‘For – oh, just for you,’ said Elfrida. ‘I thought you’d like it. It’s just a – a love-gift, you know.’
This was Aunt Edith’s way of calling a present that didn’t come just because it was your birthday or Christmas, or you had had a tooth out.
‘A love-gift?’ said the old woman slowly. ‘After all this long time?’
Elfrida did not understand. How should she? It’s almost impossible for even the most grown up and clever of us to know how women used to be treated – and not so very long ago either – if they were once suspected of being witches. It generally began by the old woman’s being cleverer than her neighbours, having more wit to find out what was the matter with sick people, and more still to cure them. Then her extra cleverness would help her to foretell storms and gales and frosts, and to find water by the divining rod – a very mysterious business. And when once you can find out where water is by just carrying a forked hazel twig between your hands and walking across a meadow, you can most likely find out a good many other things that your stupid neighbours would never dream of. And in those long-ago days – which really aren’t so very long ago – your being so much cleverer than your neighbours would be quite enough. You would soon be known as the ‘wise woman’ – and from ‘wise woman’ to witch was a very short step indeed.
So Elfrida, not understanding, said, ‘Yes; is your fowl ill?’
‘’Twill mend,’ said the old woman, – ‘’twill mend. The