The room she was in was small and richly furnished with uncomfortable armchairs, upholstered in dark red plush; there was a table covered with a red cloth, which had a fringe of little balls; a slowly ticking clock stood on the mantelpiece; on a small table, before the window, stood a large green pot containing an arum lily with one leaf half-unfurled and a white bud showing; from the curtain rod hung a wire cage full of maidenhair ferns. On the walls were photographs: Mr. and Mrs. Sotheby on their wedding day, a plump and rather ugly young woman, the Tower Bridge with a ship going through it, and a boy with pomatum on his hair. Then, turning her head, Anne saw a large photograph hanging just behind her.
“What a strange face!” for the young man certainly had a strange face, and was wearing an odd little round cap, almost like a skull-cap, with a tiny tail sticking up in the middle; his throat was bare, with no sign of a collar or tie, or even of a shirt. A cigarette was hanging out of the corner of his mouth, but the strangest thing was not the cap, but the face, or rather the expression of the face, for the features themselves were vaguely familiar. The young man was laughing, but there was a look of careless contempt, almost of insolence, which Anne very much disliked. The nose was long and straight, and rather foxy, the eyes mere slits set wide apart; the forehead was broad and large, but the chin feeble. “Good gracious me!” exclaimed Anne, noticing that in one ear there was a little earring. “A man wearing an earring! How extraordinary!” She gazed at the photograph for some time, taking in every detail of the face. Certainly there was something disagreeable in the expression; the laughter was untrustworthy and heartless; he was laughing at other people, not sharing his laughter with them.
But the customer was staying a long while in the shop, and, becoming impatient, she went to the door and listened. The voice she heard was that of Mr. Lambert, a young farmer, whom Anne knew since he attended church (he was a churchwarden), and once he had stopped her in the road and told her that she should go riding.
To Anne his remark had seemed ridiculous, since he must know well enough that they were too poor to keep a hack for her use, and he could not have meant that he had one for her to ride.
If he had wished to say: “If you get the habit, I’ll mount you on one of my horses,” why hadn’t he said so? He could not have intended that, and even if he had, what would she have answered? What did he expect in return? That she should go riding with him? She smiled at the thought: Mr. Lambert’s company might not be so bad, but she would not care for it if she were under an obligation to him. If she killed his horse in taking a fence ... that would be awkward! And if he met a girl whom he liked better as a companion on his rides—in that case she would be left with the habit on her hands. Her father would never allow such a thing; think of the gossip there would be!
“Damn this place! Damn my father!” she said to herself, and listening to the farmer’s sharp, but very pleasant voice, and closing her eyes, she had for a moment the delicious sensation of the horse bounding under her, of patting its withers, listening to the creak of the saddle, and keeping her balance while she looked proudly over the level landscape of the fens.
“I will, I will, I will,” she repeated to herself. “I will ride a horse once in my life. I will even if I get left with a riding habit. But I suppose that is the spirit which brings young girls to ruin. I can imagine how Maggie would say to herself: ‘I will let my head be turned by a man, even if I am left with a baby.’” Anne laughed at the comparison. “Silly thoughts.... They hurry me on to absurdities, and all because Mr. Lambert said something polite and meaningless to me, for it is politeness to assume that one can do whatever one likes without regard for money. But here am I laughing when I ought still to be sobbing, since I am still waiting for Mrs. Sotheby to come and console me. What shall I do? How on earth, by what false pretences, did I ever get into this cosy little room? If Mr. Lambert does not go away soon, I shall march into the shop, lift the flap in the counter and go away.”
She listened then to the voices. “Very good, Mrs. Sotheby, you shall have the pig for scalding on Thursday, unless Mr. Sotheby sends me word to-morrow.”
The bell of the shop tinkled; Mr. Lambert paused to add a last word, and Mrs. Sotheby answered him: “Well, if you say so, Mr. Lambert,” and Anne could hear her hand on the latch.
“Well, I thought Mr. Lambert was never going. He had come to see Mr. Sotheby about carting sand, and really I didn’t know what to say to him. Now I have agreed to share a pig with him; let me know if you would like a leg of pork, or sausages, or one of my pork cheeses. My husband is so busy now; I hardly see him from morning till night; he is putting up some cottages at Linton, and his mind is far more on them than on the grocery business, so that I have quite as much as I can manage. I am really sorry that I undertook to scald the pig, but it was rather tempting. Still, however many pigs I scald, I shall never do half so much as Emmanuel does; he’s out every day of the week, and drives the round himself, and then he preaches twice every Sunday, here and in the Ebenezer Tabernacle at Wet Coulter. Mr. Lambert wanted to see him in a hurry, but I could not tell him where to find my husband. I cannot keep in my head half the things he is doing, and I have not yet been out to see the Linton cottages. Still, it keeps him in good spirits, and he is doing it for my boy. But I mustn’t keep you any longer now.” Mrs. Sotheby stopped speaking, she smiled, and added rather shyly: “You will come and chat with me sometimes, won’t you, Miss Dunnock?”