“Advertisement. They lived somewhere near London, I believe; came into a bit of money, I’ve heard, and thought they’d settle in the country. I give them a morning a week on Wednesdays. The man they bought it off had been a tax-collector somewhere in the West Indies. He swindled them properly, but they were sorry for him because he had a floating kidney—floating in alcohol, I should think, by the amount he drank. But they won’t hear a word against him even now. He’s living in Galton and they send him cabbages every week, which he gives to his rabbits when he’s sober and throws at his housekeeper when he’s drunk. Sunny Bank! I’m glad it’s not my Bank. As I jokingly said to my missus, I should soon be stony-broke. Ah, well, there’s all sorts here and that’s a fact,” Mr. Pluepott continued, with a pensive flick at his pony. “That man over there, for instance.” He pointed with his whip through the gathering darkness to a particularly small tin cottage. “He used to play the trombone in a theater till he played his inside out; now he thinks he’s going to make a fortune growing early tomatoes for Covent Garden market. You get him with a pencil in his hand of an evening and you’d think about borrowing money from him next year; but when you see him next morning trying to cover a five-by-four packing-case with a broken sash-light, you’d be more afraid of his trying to borrow from you.”
With such conversation did Mr. Pluepott beguile the way to Medworth; and when he heard that Sylvia intended to walk in the dusk to Green Lanes he insisted on driving her the extra two miles.
“The hives won’t fly away,” he said, cheerfully, “and I like to make a good job of a thing. Well, now you’ve found your way to Oaktown, I hope you’ll visit us again. Mrs. Pluepott will be very glad to see you drop in for a cup of tea any day, and if you’ve got any comical reading-matter, she’d be glad to borrow from you; for her chest does make her very melancholy, and, being accustomed to having me always about the house when I was cobbling, she doesn’t seem to get used to being alone. Only the other day she said if she’d known I was going to turn into a Buffalo Bill she’d rather have stayed in Bedford. ‘Land for the Millions!’ she said, ‘I reckon you’d call it Land for the Million, if you had to sweep the house clean of the mud you bring into it.’ Well, good night to you. Very glad I was able to oblige, I’m sure.”
Philip was relieved when Sylvia got back. She had never been out for so long before, and she teased him about the running away, that he had evidently imagined. She felt in a good humor after her expedition, and was glad to be back in this dignified and ancient house with its books and lamplight and not a silken bow anywhere to be seen.
“So you’ve been down to that abomination of tin houses? It’s an absolute blot on the countryside. I don’t recommend too close an acquaintanceship. I’m told it’s inhabited by an appalling set of rascals. Poor Melville, who owns the land all ’round, says he can’t keep a hare.”
Sylvia said the people seemed rather amusing, and was not at all inclined to accept Philip’s condemnation of them; he surely did not suggest that Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, for instance, were poachers?
“My dear child, people who come and live in a place like the Oak Farm Estate—Oaktown, as they have the impudence to call it—are there for no good. They’ve either done something discreditable in town or they hope to do something discreditable in the country. Oh yes, I’ve heard all about our neighbors. There’s a ridiculous fellow who calls himself a major—I believe he used to be in the volunteers—and can’t understand why he’s not made a magistrate. I’m told he’s the little tin god of Tintown. No, no, I prefer even your friendship with our vicar. Don’t be cross with me, Sylvia, for laughing at your new friends, but you mustn’t take them too seriously. I shall have finished the text I’m writing this month, and we’ll go up to London for a bit. Shall we? I’m afraid you’re getting dull down here.”
The spring wore away, but the text showed no signs of being finished. Sylvia suggested that she should invite Gladys and Enid Worsley to stay with her, but Philip begged her to postpone the invitation while he was working, and thought in any case it would be better to have them down in summer. Sylvia went to Oaktown once or twice, but said nothing about it to Philip, because from a sort of charitableness she did not want him to diminish himself further in her eyes by airing his prejudices with the complacency that seemed to increase all the time they stayed in the country.
One day at the end of April Miss Horne and Miss Hobart announced they had bought a governess-car and a pony, built a stable, and intended to celebrate their first drive by calling on Sylvia at Green Lanes. Mr. Pluepott had promised, even if it should not be on a Wednesday, to superintend the first expedition and gave his opinion of the boy whom it was proposed to employ as coachman. The boy in question, whom Mr. Pluepott called Jehuselah, whether from an attempt to combine a satirical expression of his driving and his age, or too slight acquaintance with Biblical personalities, was uncertain, was known as Ernie to Miss Horne and Miss Hobart when he was quick and good, but as Ernest when he was slow and bad; his real name all the time was Herbert.
“Good heavens!” Philip ejaculated, when he beheld the governess-car from his window. “Who on earth is this?”