“Yes, it’s a gathering of the goddesses. Have you that apple? If so, hand it over,” said Alice.
“What apple?”
“Oh, Lum, his education! Paris’s apple — Can’t you see we’ve come to be chosen?”
“Oh, well — I haven’t got any apple — I’ve eaten mine.”
“Isn’t he flat — he’s like boiling magnesia that’s done boiling for a week. Are you going to take us all to church then?”
“If you like.”
“Come on, then. Where’s the Abode of Love? Look at Lettie looking shocked. Awfully sorry, old girl — thought love agreed with you.”
“Did you say love?” inquired George.
“Yes, I did; didn’t I, Meg? And you say ‘Love’ as well, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what it is,” laughed Meg, who was very red and rather bewildered.
“‘Amor est titillatio’—‘Love is a tickling’— there — that’s it, isn’t it, Sybil?”
“How should I know.”
“Of course not, old fellow. Leave it to the girls. See how knowing Lettie looks — and, laws, Lettie, you are solemn.”
“It’s love,” suggested George, over his new neck-tie.
“I’ll bet it is ‘degustasse sat est’— ain’t it, Lettie? ‘One lick’s enough’—‘and damned be he that first cries: Hold, enough!’— Which one do you like? But are you going to take us to church, Georgie, darling — one by one, or all at once?”
“What do you want me to do, Meg?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t mind.”
“And do you mind, Lettie?”
“I’m not going to church.”
“Let’s go a walk somewhere — and let us start now,” said Emily somewhat testily. She did not like this nonsense. “There you are, Syb — you’ve got your orders — don’t leave me behind,” wailed Alice.
Emily frowned and bit her finger.
“Come on, Georgie. You look like the finger of a pair of scales — between two weights. Which’ll draw?”
“The heavier,” he replied, smiling, and looking neither at Meg or Lettie.
“Then it’s Meg,” cried Alice. “Oh, I wish I was fleshy — I’ve no chance with Syb against Pem.”
Emily flashed looks of rage; Meg blushed and felt ashamed; Lettie began to recover from her first outraged indignation, and smiled.
Thus we went a walk, in two trios.
Unfortunately, as the evening was so fine, the roads were full of strollers: groups of three or four men dressed in pale trousers and shiny black cloth coats, following their suspicious little dogs: gangs of youths slouching along, occupied with nothing, often silent, talking now and then in raucous tones on some subjects of brief interest: then the gallant husbands, in their tail coats very husbandly, pushing a jingling perambulator, admonished by a much-dressed spouse round whom the small members of the family gyrated: occasionally, two lovers walking with a space between them, disowning each other; occasionally, a smartly dressed mother with two little girls in white silk frocks and much expanse of yellow hair, stepping mincingly, and, near by, a father awkwardly controlling his Sunday suit.
To endure all this it was necessary to chatter unconcernedly. George had to keep up the conversation behind, and he seemed to do it with ease, discoursing on the lambs, discussing the breed — when Meg exclaimed:
“Oh, aren’t they black! They might ha’ crept down th’ chimney. I never saw any like them before.” He described how he had reared two on the bottle, exciting Meg’s keen admiration by his mothering of the lambs. Then he went on to the peewits, harping on the same string: how they would cry and pretend to be wounded —“Just fancy, though!”— and how he had moved the eggs of one pair while he was ploughing, and the mother had followed them, and had even sat watching as he drew near again with the plough, watching him come and go —“Well, she knew you — but they do know those who are kind to them —”
“Yes,” he agreed, “her little bright eyes seem to speak as you go by.”
“Oh, I do think they’re nice little things — don’t you, Lettie?” cried Meg in access of tenderness.
Lettie did — with brevity.
We walked over the hills and down into Greymede. Meg thought she ought to go home to her grandmother, and George bade her go, saying he would call and see her in an hour or so.
The dear girl was disappointed, but she went unmurmuring. We left Alice with a friend, and hurried home through Selsby to escape the after-church parade.
As you walk home past Selsby, the pit stands up against the west, with beautiful tapering chimneys marked in black against the swim of sunset, and the head-stocks etched with tall significance on the brightness. Then the houses are squat in rows of shadow at the foot of these high monuments.
“Do you know, Cyril,” said Emily, “I have meant to go and see Mrs Annable — the keeper’s wife — she’s moved into Bonsart’s Row, and the children come to school — Oh, it’s awful! — they’ve never been to school, and they are unspeakable.”
“What’s she gone there for?” I asked.
“I suppose the squire wanted the Kennels — and she chose it herself. But the way they live — it’s fearful to think of!”
“And why haven’t you been?”
“I don’t know — I’ve meant to — but —” Emily stumbled. “You didn’t want, and you daren’t?”
“Perhaps not — would you?”
“Pah — let’s go now! — There, you hang back.”
“No, I don’t,” she replied sharply.
“Come on then, we’ll go through the twitchel. Let me tell Lettie.”
Lettie at once declared, “No!”— with some asperity. “All right,” said George. “I’ll take you home.”
But this suited Lettie still less.
“I don’t know what you want to go for, Cyril,” she said, “and Sunday night, and, everybody everywhere. I want to go home.”
“Well — you go then — Emily will come with you.”
“Ha,” cried the latter, “you think I won’t go to see her.” I shrugged my shoulders, and George pulled his moustache. “Well, I don’t care,” declared Lettie, and we marched down the twitchel, Indian file.
We came near to the ugly rows of houses that back up against the pit-hill. Everywhere is black and sooty; the houses are back to back, having only one entrance, which is from a square garden where black-speckled weeds grow sulkily, and which looks on to a row of evil little ash-pit huts. The road everywhere is trodden over with a crust of soot and coal-dust and cinders.
Between the rows, however, was a crowd of women and children, bare hands, bare arms, white aprons, and black Sunday frocks bristling with gimp. One or two men squatted on their heels with their backs against a wall, laughing. The women were waving their arms and screaming up at the roof of the end house.
Emily and Lettie drew back.
“Look there — it’s that little beggar, Sam!” said George.
There, sure enough, perched on the ridge of the roof against the end