"How would I know what the likes o' ye would fancy?" she said, almost with despair, and went on to hope that our visit might prove an education into the ways of the aristocracy of which she had long stood in need, but she coupled the admission with a warning that she "was very owld and very dull."
It was a high responsibility, this position of exponents of an unknown type, and it is much to be regretted that we were forced to leave our venerable disciple under the impression that the upper classes usually cook their own food at hotels. It should here be said that this expedition had not been entered upon without a certain foreknowledge of what it was likely to involve, and amongst other precautions were provisions of a portable sort. These included sausages, and the sausages we confided to our old lady.
We sat in the parlour enjoying the appetite for dinner that is one of the bright features of a genuine holiday. After a delay of about half an hour, Mary Kate's head was thrust through a narrow opening of the door.
"Granne'ma says will the little puddings be split?"
Had the answer been Yes, and that it was usual to serve them with cream and sugar, I feel sure that grandmamma would have complied. As it was, after instructions to Mary Kate, of a lucidity unrivalled by Mrs. Beeton, the sausages appeared, pale, tepid, raw, in a pie-dish, just a-wash with luke-warm water.
The holiday appetite quailed at the sight, and the chef was summoned from the conversazione still raging in the kitchen. A single glance at the guests told her of failure, and, with a masterly grasp of the position, she hurried back to the kitchen and returned with the frying-pan.
"Keep it now yersels," she said. "Didn't I say to ye I was too owld?"
From that time the parlour grate led a sullied life, but—which may have consoled it—a thoroughly useful one. We re-cooked the sausages upon it; the perambulator yielded its increase, toast, grilled beef, sausages, who could reasonably ask for more?
We spent two days and two nights there; days of perfect weather, spent in exploring a coast as wild and beautiful as the heart of holiday maker could desire, nights strangely, almost desolately devoid of the entomological excursions and pursuits usual to village inns, and, in spite of the peculiarities of the pillows, sleep was not difficult. Or rather, in candour it should be said, was difficult only after the rising of the sun. For with the dawn, a vagrant population was astir in the village; a street Arab community of hens, dogs, geese and donkeys, incessant and clarion-toned in their addresses to morn and to each other; creatures who slept under carts and in stray corners; who treated life as a lounge, and regarded their owners as suzerains merely, to whom occasional allegiance was to be rendered, or a tributary egg or two laid in an inaccessible place.
On the whole, the donkeys are those of whom I can speak least temperately. They had, for want, possibly, of other employment, adopted the position of town-criers to the village, or perhaps were its prophets, perhaps its Cassandras, and they uplifted their testimony from sunrise till nightfall with a poignancy that rent the very skies. Standing one evening on one of the low hills that hemmed the village into its corner by the sea, I counted easily, and with half a glance, four of these enthusiasts, planted each on a commanding rock or mound, and sending his wild voice abroad over the valley. It was a sunny evening, after a day of sad and opalescent beauty, and the sea had brightened into blue and silver; the white-washed gables and a far white lighthouse were radiant with recovered cheerfulness, but the jackasses were as despairful and implacable as Jeremiah.