Yes; on the top of the butter-milk, with its rich and poignant smell there floated what might have been the golden ball cast by the Princess of the fairy-tale into the fountain. It was accomplished, that homely miracle on which town-dwellers have been used to waste never a thought.
England's butter!
For years English people took butter for granted. Pre-war butter was just something that came out of a shop and appeared as if automatically in silver dishes with parsley about it. They never inquired what journeys it had made before ever it reached that shop; whether from Wales, Ireland, Holland, or Denmark. It was there; it happened. ("Pass the butter, please.") Carelessly they spread it between hot toast and strawberry jam; casually they left it in unwanted pyramids at the sides of their plates. In kitchens they cast it in lumps into pans that concocted sauces; they kneaded it by the fistful into rich cakes. They smarmed it on to the fur of petted cats so that the creatures, licking it from their coats, need not stray. Some of us can even remember laying "wobs" of it (the size of a week's ration) on the school-room linoleum and thus organizing slides for flying feet in Blake-ily protected school-boots. Only at nursery tea-tables, perhaps, was the warning ever heeded "Now, then! Waste not, want not!"
We have paid for our extravagant waste of other things besides butter....
And nowadays perhaps more interest is taken in the process that produces such butter as is allowed to us. As carefully as one who grades yellow amethysts I tipped up the churn, let the butter-milk run out into the appointed crock, and washed, with cold spring water, every granule of my precious butter off the lid of the churn. I collected it in a milk-white wooden bowl with more water; I worked it with that scoop which Mrs. Price called the "Llwy-y-menyn," a spade-shaped thing, carved out of a single piece of pear-wood and having a flat round handle with a simple design for printing the pat. The farmer's wife told me it was more than a hundred years old; how strange to think that more than a century ago—in the year perhaps of Waterloo!—some clever hand had cut and carved the tool which was to do its tiny "bit" in the war for England's food!
I wielded it happily today, with that daringly happy thought still warm at my heart.
"Salt, Joan," said Mrs. Price, handing me the wooden box. I added the salt; worked the butter again, then put it aside in its corner. I had to leave it for a night to set.
And my thoughts were left, as it were, to set also.
For two days I heard and saw nothing of the Lodge party. By this time I had made up my mind how I should behave to Captain Holiday, alias Richard Wynn, next time that I saw him. I should observe him closely. I should take my courage in both hands. I should say to him: "Captain Holiday, I want to speak to you. Do you know, I don't think it is quite fair to make half-confidences to one's friends! If you confide in them about a given subject you ought to tell them the whole of the story. Not begin—and then leave off midway. For instance, you began weeks ago to tell me the story of that girl who wouldn't say whether she would marry you or not. And you don't tell me how that story is getting on! You simply say 'Good-morning' and ask me questions about myself. I should like to know about your affair, since you did allow me to hear that there was one. And now that the girl is here in Careg——"
Here I meant to break off. Or rather, here I knew that Captain Holiday would interrupt in his brusquest tone. He would be quite certain to say "The girl here? What d'you mean by that?"