(6) Black coffee, tasting of dish-cloth, with a virulently green liqueur that we hoped might drown the tastes of the other courses, and a cheap cigarette.
England's lunch!
* * * * * * *
Certainly life was a succession of contrasts. From the dark fugginess of that crowded little Italian restaurant—which I'd loved because Harry "discovered" it—to this spotless Welsh kitchen where the kindly farm people "mothered" the five girls in farm-kit—Vic, Elizabeth, myself and the other two more advanced pupils. One of these was "Sybil," who had played the piano at the Hut last night, and who took her dip in the pool before going to work; the other was a bright-looking girl they called "Curley," though her hair was the straightest imaginable.
That gentle giant, Mr. Price, had a word for each as he carved.
"I like to know something about all you young ladies who've come down here to work," he said to me. "A lot we've had down here since the start. Twenty, I think, coming and going; splendid girls—good little workers, all. And some were one thing and some another. From South Wales the two last were who were here; fathers in the collieries. Then there's Curley," he nodded at her, "all her people in works, Birmingham. And Sybil here," with another nod, "from Buckinghamshire, never been away from home before without a maid, she told my wife. Father a general. May I ask if your father was in the Army too, perhaps?"
"No; my father wasn't in anything particular," I said. "He used to do a little bit of farming himself."
A gleam of interest lighted up the giant's blue eyes.
"Dear me! Farmed himself, did he? How big a farm, missy?" he asked.
"Oh, not big at all. Nor at all successful!" I told him ruefully. "I'm afraid he just lost money over it about seven years ago."