Polly was a little lean girl, eight or nine years old, with a face that was soft and rosy and fresh as the bud of gum on the black branches of the orchard. She wore a pretty dimity frock and had gay flowers in her hat. This was her last house of call, and, sitting down to watch Mr. Piffingcap, the town’s one barber, shaving friends and enemies alike, she would be the butt of their agreeable chaff because of her pleasant country jargon—as rich as nutmeg in a homely cake—or her yellow scattered hair, or her sweet eyes that were soft as remembered twilight.
“Your razor is roaring, Mr. Piffingcap!”—peeping round the chair at him. “Oh, it’s that Mr. James!” she would say in pretended surprise. Mr. James had a gruff beard, and the act of removing it occasioned a noise resembling that of her mother scraping the new potatoes.
“What have you got this pot for?” she chattered; “I don’t like it, it’s ugly.”
“Don’t say that now,” said Mr. Piffingcap, pausing with his hand on the butcher’s throttle, “it was Mr. Grafton’s parting gift to me; I shall never see him again, nor will you neither; he’s gone round the world for ever more this time!”
“Oh!” gurgled the child in a manner that hung between pain and delight, “has he gone to Rinjigoffer land?”
“Gone where?” roared Timothy James, lifting his large red neck from the rest.
“He’s told me all about it,” said the child, ignoring him.
“Well, he’s not gone there,” interrupted the barber.
And the child continued, “It’s where the doves and the partridges are so fat that they break down the branches of the trees where they roost....”
“Garn with yer!” said Mr. James.