THE WISH HOUSE
THE new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs. Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (Ts softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the ‘bus brought Mrs. Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.
Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of quilt- patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.
‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’
‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’
Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?’
Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly-she never hurried-and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.
‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs. Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.
Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’
‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs. Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’
‘This ‘un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’
‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it...’ Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!’
The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday’ shopping’ ‘bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.
‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs. Ashcroft observed.
‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny-three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller-ain’t it?’
‘‘Tis for Arthur-my Jane’s eldest.’
‘But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?’
‘No. ‘Tis a picnic-basket.’
‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ‘im-pore fool me!’
‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.
‘He do. ‘No odds ‘twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ‘Take all an’ give naught-an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’
‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs. Ashcroft said.
‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ‘im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’
‘I lay he charged her, then.’
‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’
‘Tck!’
Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely.
‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs. Ashcroft explained.
‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ‘oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?’
‘They must look arter theirselves-’same as we did.’ Mrs. Ashcroft began to set out the tea.
‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs. Fettley.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 612