“A pound a week!” chanted the ecstatic Mrs. Tanner. “It’s gone up since t’ War.”
“Ay, and as bonny a spot as you could wish!”
“Coal!”
“Such a view as there is, looking right over towards t’ sea!”
“No rates nor nothing,” sang Mrs. Tanner; “and water laid on from a big tank!”
“A flower-garden, wi’ a man to see to it—”
“Tatie bed, gooseberry bushes, black currants, red currants, mint——”
“Eh, and such furniture and fittings as you couldn’t find bettered at the Hall!” Mrs. Clapham’s tone was almost reverent. It seemed to her rather greedy to lay stress upon the material side of her luck, but the excellent plenishings provided by old Mr. T. could scarcely be termed that. It was more as if they were the fittings of the temple which the place stood for in her mind, than the actual chattels of a house in which she was going to live.
They laughed again as they paused for breath, because even for a thing that was sacred nothing but laughter was good enough to greet it. Then Mrs. Clapham checked herself firmly a second time.
“There I go again—making out I’ve got the place, when I’ve never had as much as a word! I’m just asking for bad luck, that’s what it is! What, blessed if I didn’t find myself singing at my work, for all the world like a daft lass going to meet a lad!” She chuckled again, drawing her hands slowly backwards and forwards over her knees. “Serves me right if I bring a judgment on my crazy head!... But I was fair hankering after somebody to talk to when you come in. It’s next best thing to my own Tibbie, having you setting there.”