“We call the turkey Major Kettlewell because he looks like Major Kettlewell, but Major Kettlewell himself lives over there.”
The elderly lady indicated the other side of the road with a vague gesture, and went on:
“Where can that dratted bird have got to? Major! Major! Major! Chuch—chick—chilly—chilly—chuck—chuck,” she called.
Sylvia hoped that the real major lived far enough away to be out of hearing.
“Never keep a turkey,” the elderly lady went on, addressing Sylvia. “We didn’t kill it for Christmas, because we’d grown fond of it, even though he is like that old ruffian of a major. And ever since he’s gone on the wander. It’s the springtime coming, I suppose.”
The elderly lady’s companion had by this time reached the gate, and Sylvia saw that she was considerably younger, but with the same hall-mark of old-maidishness.
“Don’t worry any more about the bird, Adelaide,” said the new-comer. “It’s tea-time. Depend upon it, he’s crossed over to the Pluepotts’. This time I really will wring his neck.”
Sylvia prepared to move along, but the first lady asked her where she was going, and, when she heard Green Lanes, exclaimed:
“Gemini! That’s beyond Medworth, isn’t it? You’d better come in and have a cup of tea with us. I’m Miss Horne, and my friend here is Miss Hobart.”
Sunny Bank, as this particular tin house was named, not altogether inappropriately, although it happened to be on the less sunny side of the road, was built half-way up a steepish slope of very rough ground from which enough flints had been extracted to pave a zigzag of ascending paths, and to vary the contour of the slope with a miniature mountain range of unused material without apparently smoothing the areas of proposed cultivation.