“Because I may require to look up a more expressive word occasionally, or enlarge my flow of vocabulary,” Virginia explained. “And I conclude I’m not expected to be absolutely dumb when we get there!”
Of course, I don’t mean to imply that these are necessarily the books we should have named had we sat down thoughtfully to compile a list most representative of our tastes and needs; but whatever list I had made, I’m sure I should have included the volumes I named; and it goes to show that the books that make an individual appeal to us are not necessarily those that our friends expect us to name.
The library catalogue was never completed, for, before we had time further to criticize each other’s preferences, we were pulled up short by a sound.
We all stopped our chatter on an instant, for surely and certainly there could be no mistaking it, there was the ring of an iron spade chinking on stone! When last we had looked out, just after breakfast, not a stone had been visible for a spade to chink against in the whole vicinity. We flew to the door, and there, touching his hat with a smiling “Good morning, ma’am,” stood the elderly handy man who ought to have been in bed with his bad cold; and behold, a clear path to the lane. He had worked from the gate inwards, and we had been so busy with our discussions indoors, we had not heard him till he reached the porch.
“I was only able to get down downstairs yesterday,” the invalid explained. “But in any case it wasn’t no good coming over till that spell o’ snow was down, even if I’d been fit to come out.” Then, after a detailed description of symptoms and sufferings and so forth—“Yes, I think there’s a good bit more to come down yet. Nothing won’t be able to be got up from the village yet awhile; they tell me the drifts is eight feet deep in places. Maybe in a few days I’ll be able to get down. I’ll be wanting some sharps soon myself for the fowls, so I’ll have to try and get down by the end of the week. And the butcher’s killing himself this week, I could bring you up a j’int. I’ve knocked up a good bit of kindling wood in the wood shed, so you’ll be all right now.”
Yes, we were all right now, from one point of view; but I devoutly hoped he would not wait till the end of the week before he went for those “sharps,” for I had discovered that we had only one loaf in the house! And as they only bake twice a week in our village, and everyone knows how long war bread won’t keep, I need only add that already we had to cut off all the outside before bringing it to table, and by to-morrow it would be quite gorgonzola-ish right through!
As soon as he had gone, Ursula burst forth, “Don’t talk to me any more of the rights of women”—no one had been, but we let it pass—“don’t tell me they are the equals of men, and that all they want is a good education and scope for their energies. Look at us, haven’t we all had good educations?” (Ursula and her sister are thoroughly acquainted with the literature of several European countries; they read Plato in the original; and can give you reliable information on such points as the similarity between the tribes on the borders of Tibet and the Patagonians—if any exists. They can certainly be called well educated.) “And wasn’t there scope enough for our energies out there? And then consider what we accomplished! While a man like that comes along—says he never went to school in his life, just risen from a sick bed, too, so none too strong—yet in an hour or so he’s done what we should not have got through in a month. And look at the neat job he’s made of it, with the snow banked up trimly on each side; why, we were about as effective and as artistic as three fowls scratching on the surface of things. And then look at the stack of wood he got ready in no time. I’m sure I blushed to see him gazing at that collection of decrepit shovels standing in the porch——”
“And well you might blush,” edged in Virginia, “remembering how you selfishly stuck to the only decent shovel there was, with never so much as an offer to either of us to have a turn.”
“—Yes, we ought to have votes, we’re so—capable!” Ursula went on, but I begged her not to worry her head about votes just now, as the question of food was of greater national importance.