Part 14

“I fell agin the water-butt this morning,” goes on Mrs. Mutton, in the melancholy drone that is habitual to her. “A kind of weakness it was come over me. I hit my eye—something awful, Miss, as you can see!”

The signorina had been tactfully averting her gaze from that black orb; she now blesses the superior tact which enables her to contemplate it calmly.

Mrs. Tosher—a large, jovial, untidy female with a shrunken “blue cotton” inadequately fastened by two safety pins across her capacious bosom—gives a heavy but non-committal groan. Mr. Mutton’s name is not mentioned. The water-butt explanation is accepted without demur.

“Of course, she’s ’ad a shock to-day, Miss, you see,” says the village matron, and brings the conversation back to the original topic, which is one of great attraction.

“Yes, Miss, it ’aving been just as it might be me, Miss.” Mrs. Mutton sighs, and looks in a detached, if one-sided manner, out of the grimy window. The visitor perceives there is nothing for it: she must hear the details. Wisely she resigns herself.

“What happened?”

“Well, it was all along of two suet dumplings and some chops, Miss, which wasn’t as they ought to have been, having been kept in the ’ouse too long, you see. Wasn’t that it, Mrs. Tosher, my dear?”

“Yes, my dear, and some ’ard bits of parsnip.”

“But it was mostly the chops, Miss, they’d been kept, you see. The doctors, they couldn’t do nothing for her.” Mrs. Mutton sighs and lifts the fringe of her shawl to the damaged eye. Tragic as the tale is, Loki’s Mother visibly brightens:

“But then the poor thing was poisoned,” she cries cheerfully.

“Yes, Miss, potomaine poison along of her condition, being the same as mine, Miss.”

“But, Mrs. Mutton, anyone—”

“No, Miss.” Mrs. Tosher intervenes: she cannot allow this foolish attempt at consolation to proceed. “The doctor said it was along of her condition.”

“Yes, Miss, it’s the condition as done it—all along of a bit of chop—kept like—and ’ard parsnips.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVI

A friend of ours once told us that a doubtful sister-in-law had written describing the weather as “boysterious.” The word pleases us. It looks so much more graphic, spelt thus, than in the ordinary way. Well, we are having a “boysterious” time with shifting winds, this end of March. All the poor Pheasant-eye’s leaves are bruised and drooping, and the little field of Narcissus under the Buddleia trees is bent and tangled. To-day Adam has rolled away six tubs filled with last year’s Hyacinths and put them in the border before the rough wall in the front courtyard, against which we have last autumn planted Wichuriana Roses in divers shades of yellow and tawny, chiefly “Jersey Beauties.” A row of Polyanthuses, “Munstead Strain,” are blooming in front. The Hyacinths are blue. The effect ought to be pretty in a week or so. When the Hyacinths are over we shall go back to the old pink climbing Geraniums for the tubs, and they will, please Heaven, flourish from June onwards between our yellow roses. We think we will plant pink Geraniums, but we are not quite sure, for last year we had red “Jacobys” in those tubs, and very well they looked. We should not at all object to them in contrast to the roses.

* * * * *

Last night Loki’s Grandmother began to plan a new garden extravagance. She finds it very soothing when sleep abandons her pillow. We have not half enough Honeysuckle—that’s a fact. She thinks she will order a dozen pots. She has also a desire to get a dozen Clematis, chiefly Jackmanni, in the mauve and purple sorts, and plant them in their pots—the only way, she believes, in which even the commonest sorts will grow in this ungrateful soil. Honeysuckle, we know, thrives here. One summer we took a house on a hill near this, a little house buried in a wood, and the whole place was exquisite with the scent of Honeysuckle. It was grown all about the house, and over archways in the garden. Horrid archways made of wire they were: but it didn’t matter, the Honeysuckle was the thing. We wanted all we could get of it, for there were other odours, not at all so nice, that lurked about. The owner of the house, thrifty soul ‹at least we suppose it goes with a thrifty soul›, waged war against moths with naphthalene and Bitter Apple, which are anathema maranatha to us. We have had our nights poisoned in a house in Scotland with the reek of Bitter Apple in the blankets. We don’t know what people’s noses are made of that they can voluntarily surround themselves with such a pestilential atmosphere. The owner of the awful blankets also keeps her furs with the same evil-smelling precaution; and we can trace her entrance into the most crowded winter tea-party in London if she has as much as passed up the stairs.

Besides Bitter Apple inside the honeysuckle-covered house, there was a pig outside—not on the premises hired by us, but in the adjoining place, where there was a school for little boys. When the wind blew from the direction of that school, the garden was odious, Honeysuckle and all. The first day we hoped it might be accidental. Then Saturday came, and we suppose the odd man did a turn at the sty, for there was peace till the next Tuesday, when the wind blew from the south again. Then Loki’s Grandmother marched into the room of Loki’s Grandfather ‹there was no Loki then, so he wasn’t a grandfather, but that is immaterial› and dictated a letter to the schoolmaster. Loki’s Future Grandfather protested. It is the kind of thing he hates doing. She drove him into the garden to smell. He tried to say he couldn’t smell it. Then she changed her tactics and hinted at insalubrity—a case of diphtheria in the village, and the danger to Loki’s Future Mother. That had him. He went in and sat down like a lamb. She dictated, as has been said. If anyone wants to know the kind of letter in which to remonstrate upon a neighbouring schoolmaster’s pigsty, he cannot do better than copy this model:

“Dear Sir,—I must apologize for troubling you but I feel sure that you are unaware of the offensive condition of the pigsty which adjoins our garden—”

“Offensive?” said Loki’s Grandpa doubtfully.

“Offensive,” said she firmly. “Offensive, you can’t put anything milder. It’s disgusting, pestilential, a public nuisance.” “There is so much sickness in the district—” she dictated on.

“Oh, I don’t think I need put that.” Loki’s Grandfather was getting bored.

“You must,” said she; “that will fetch him more than anything. Isn’t he a schoolmaster? If it gets about that he’s got an insanitary pig—”

Well, the letter was finished with this artful twist. It had the most brilliant and unexpected results. Not only was the schoolmaster profoundly grateful for having his attention drawn to the matter—and the pigsty really was better ever after—but he expressed his gratitude in the most effusive terms. And he and his whole family called, and we went to tea in a thunderstorm at the school-house, which apparently had been built the day before yesterday, for the plaster was so wet the whole place steamed, and Loki’s Grandmother caught the cold of her life.

* * * * *

It is a very singular thing that in Ireland, the Padrona’s native land, supposed, and with reason, to be very inferior in the matter of cleanliness, the pig should be so much better cared for. Never have we found the sweet airs of that beloved country impregnated with “bouquet de pigsty” as they are in every farm here. Of course most of the pigs in Ireland—nice, clean, intelligent, active creatures—roam cheerfully about the roads all day, and share the family domicile by night. But even on properties which own a separate habitation for the “gintleman that pays the rint” it is swept and garnished for him in a manner seldom seen over here.