Moreover, the country sense of clannish commonness in so much took her by degrees, giving her whole new world into her hand.
“I believe I’m beginning to understand,” she said to Hamer, one day when the mood of analysis was upon her. “I know now why old James was so angry when we cut down that sycamore, just after we came. Why, I could hate the whole District Council for pulling down the ferny old wall at Abbey Corner, just because you and I ran round it into the Chairman! Everything seems to get up close to you in the country and make a personal matter of itself without being asked. Haven’t you noticed how people say, ‘Oh, the harvest is all in, with us!’ or, ‘We did splendidly in roots!’ even if they own nothing but an ivy-strangled cottage with a lean-to henpen and a border of nasturtiums? It grows on you, somehow. Everybody does it. Why, only last week, when those horrid cousins of mother’s motored through, and did nothing but grumble about the Westmorland butter, I found myself saying: ‘It can’t have been local. Ours has been winning all over the place!’ just as if I’d been raising prize pats on my own account, instead of Harriet and Mrs. Wilson!”
“It’s great!” Hamer answered, irrelevantly but comprehensively, as he had answered, months before. He had a fat book or two in his arm.
“Doing anything this evening, Dandy Anne? I’m going over to Wild Duck with these, and I thought of bringing Knewstubb back with me.”
“Need we have him to dinner again to-night?” Dandy sighed. “(No. The V.A.D. was yesterday, and the S.P. something-or-other’s to-morrow.) I’m sure I know every hair on that wretched Lapwing, by now! And two of the maids have threatened to give notice if he goes on calling them ‘Skirts.’ Harriet says it’s his generic term for all women-servants, just as he calls all the men ‘Whiskers,’ but it isn’t very polite. I wish you’d give him a hint, Daddy dear.”
Hamer looked troubled.
“Of course I don’t want to pester you with him, little girl, but I can’t help worrying and wanting to lever him out of his rut. A man with my luck ought to be handing it round if he can. Knewstubb isn’t bad all through. He’s only—careless. He’s begun to take an interest in one or two things going, lately. And, anyway, my whisky’s better than the ‘White Lion’s.’”
“How you are scooping in the shekels up aloft, Daddy dear! If you’re not careful, you’ll break the bank. Why, yes, Stubbs is quite a different creature already, and you’ve started others stretching a hand to him, too. They made him a platform ornament at the last Conservative meeting, and several good souls are trying to push him into positions of trust. It won’t be your fault if you don’t waft him into Heaven among you!”
Hamer looked more troubled than ever.
“You’re not sneering at me, are you, Dandy Anne?”