Then Ursula is sure to bring some contribution to the larder—perhaps tomatoes and a cake. Naturally, there is our lunch basket; and I, personally, never feel complete unless I have my leather dispatch-box beside me. I also take a suit-case containing my mackintosh—in case it rains when I arrive—books and papers which I never read, knitting, and similar necessities for the journey; it is also useful as a final receptacle for oddments I omitted to pack elsewhere. Virginia and Ursula bring similar suit-cases, for similar reasons.
Sometimes Abigail springs surprises on us at the last minute. “Whatever have you there?” I asked one day, as she joined us on the Paddington platform, a jangling parcel in one hand that sounded like a badly cracked bell, and a large protrusion—silent, fortunately—embraced in the other arm.
“Oh, this is just a new zinc pail” (shaking the musical packet), “we need an extra one; and I’ve put in a little iron shovel, as I want one for my kitchen scuttle: and there’s a nutmeg grater too; the one down there is getting rusty. And this” (nodding towards her chest) “is an enamel washing-up bowl. Our big one down there leaks.”
And she proceeded serenely on her way to the accompaniment of iron shovel clink-clanging against zinc pail, with the nutmeg-grater tintinnabulating cheerfully in a higher key—and evidently pleased at the public interest she was arousing.
Not that her surprises are always so useful. On one occasion I noticed she had brought two collapsible straw baskets, but concluded she had some very special new frocks for the flower show. The porter disposed of the luggage—while Abigail was looking the bookstall over. When she returned and found both baskets missing, she rushed to the guard’s van. Soon things were being dragged out again, Abigail excitedly urging haste. The guard helped, Abigail assisting with much conversation.
Eventually she lugged one basket up to her own compartment, scorning the help of the penitent porter. As she passed my compartment, a heartrending “mee-au” came from the basket.
“What in the world—!!—!!!” I began.
“It’s only Angelina,” Abigail explained. “She hasn’t seemed well lately. I thought a change of air might do her good. Only it gave me a bit of a fright when I found they’d put her in the van, thinking she was luggage!”
(Incidentally, Angelina is my cat.)
Being my own place and not someone else’s we are going to, it occasionally happens that there are items of furnishing that need to go down, a mirror, for instance, that is too large to pack in a trunk. Strictly speaking, the railway company might be within their rights if they argued that such things could not legitimately be called passenger’s luggage; but Virginia said, with regard to the mirror—4 feet × 2—that if they objected to take it, she should tell them every woman is entitled to carry a mirror among her personal luggage.
Fortunately no one so far has objected to any of the details of our impedimenta, so long as the excess charges are promptly paid. We usually go down with the same guard. I tell him what the contraband is. He carries the parcel off majestically, assuring me that his one eye won’t leave it all the way down, no matter where the other may be focused; and he begs me to have no anxiety as to its safety. I haven’t. I know from long experience that the guards and officials on the G.W.R. have elevated politeness and courtesy from a mere duty to a fine art.
Sometimes I almost wish they wouldn’t take quite such care of our things! There was the brown pitcher, for instance. I had been wanting a very large one for fetching the water from the spring outside the cottage gate. Of course, I know you can get big enamel jugs (painted duck-egg blue, or anything else in the art line that you fancy); but the latter seems so strident, so townified, so newly-rich, so over-dressed, when you see them beside our moss-grown wooden spout, where the mountain spring splashes down into a stony hollow, among ferns and long mosses. The sturdy but humble brown pitcher tones in better with the pale yellow sand in the bottom of the hollow, the browns and greys and greens of the stones and growing things all round. The very water falls into it with a mellow musical sound, instead of the hollow tinny ring that the enamelled creature gives forth.
But I couldn’t see one in the village shop as big as I required. Ursula, however, ran against the very thing unexpectedly in town. The only difficulty was the packing, so she decided to carry it just as it was. Virginia expressed a sincere hope that she would at least tie a pale blue bow on the handle.
She got it safely as far as Paddington, but here an iron pillar suddenly ran alongside and torpedoed the pitcher—so she said—knocking a small but very business-like hole clean through its bulging side. Then the question arose: What was she to do with the remnants? The train was due to start in two minutes, so she hadn’t time to inquire for the station dust-bin.
Virginia suggested that she should try to induce the bookstall boy to accept it as payment for a packet of milk chocolate; failing that, she had better put an advertisement in the paper offering a wonderful specimen of antique Roman pottery in exchange for a sable motoring coat, or a cartload of white mice.
What she did do was to leave it tidily on the nearest seat, with the intention of bestowing sixpence on the first porter she could waylay if he would make himself responsible for its after career. But apparently every employee at Paddington Station had enlisted.
The whistle was blown, and the train started to move slowly, just as the vigilant eye of the guard fell upon the disabled crock. His face lighted up. He seized it, rushed to the moving compartment containing Ursula. “Madam,” he gasped, “you have forgotten this,” and he thrust it into her arms.
She didn’t dare try to leave it behind any more!
Then there was the fish. It was on an occasion when Virginia was coming down by herself, and thus lacked the restraining, and more practical, hand of Ursula. Now, as I have already hinted, Virginia is an intelligent girl. She can tell you exactly how many million tons of certain chemicals could be excavated from the very bottom of Vesuvius (if only they could manage to put the fire out, of course), and how, if these million tons were applied to the land in Mars, as artificial manure, the wheat crop they would produce in one year—if only you could raise their temperature a few hundred degrees, and this could easily be done if you transfer—by wireless—the heat that isn’t needed in Vesuvius to Mars (or is it the moon?), where they do want it—why, then—(where was I?)—Oh, yes, the wheat crop they would harvest per annum would be sufficient to feed the whole of the inhabitants of this planet of ours, and several others thrown in, for—I forgot how many dozen years.
Yes, she is a very bright girl, just as well informed on any other subject you like to mention—excepting fish! There she draws a woeful blank: she has no more notion how to tell fresh fish at sight than a baby!
Still, she is generous in her intentions, and as no one ever thinks of journeying to the cottage without taking something in the eatable line—it is only right to take a little present when you go to stay with friends, isn’t it?—Virginia cast about as to what she could bring. Game has no attraction—we have plenty of that. Fish, on the contrary, is a rarity. Although our river is full, we seldom see fish at the cottage, excepting a very over-due variety that a man peddles round occasionally.
So she decided on fish—alas! And hastened into the first fishmonger’s she saw and ordered a dozen pairs of soles. She maintains that wasn’t what she meant to ask for. It was oysters she wanted to bestow on me, and she went in with