“Where’s the pony gone?” asked Margaret after a pause.
“The pony? Oh, dead, ever so long ago.” “The wych-elm I remember. Helen spoke of it as a very splendid tree.”
“It is the finest wych-elm in Hertfordshire. Did your sister tell you about the teeth?”
“No.”
“Oh, it might interest you. There are pigs’ teeth stuck into the trunk, about four feet from the ground. The country people put them in long ago, and they think that if they chew a piece of the bark, it will cure the toothache. The teeth are almost grown over now, and no one comes to the tree.”
“I should. I love folklore and all festering superstitions.”
“Do you think that the tree really did cure toothache, if one believed in it?”
“Of course it did. It would cure anything—once.”
“Certainly I remember cases—you see I lived at Howards End long, long before Mr. Wilcox knew it. I was born there.”
The conversation again shifted. At the time it seemed little more than aimless chatter. She was interested when her hostess explained that Howards End was her own property. She was bored when too minute an account was given of the Fussell family, of the anxieties of Charles concerning Naples, of the movements of Mr. Wilcox and Evie, who were motoring in Yorkshire. Margaret could not bear being bored. She grew inattentive, played with the photograph frame, dropped it, smashed Dolly’s glass, apologized, was pardoned, cut her finger thereon, was pitied, and finally said she must be going—there was all the housekeeping to do, and she had to interview Tibby’s riding-master.