There were two items in the women’s chatter that were enlightening, however. I had always suspected that Mrs. Price knew where certain items from my store cupboard had gone one winter’s night when the cottage was uninhabited and the kitchen window forced. I doubt if there was another person in the place who would have done it. Still I was glad to have the mystery cleared up.
I was not surprised to hear that all and sundry had the run of my house when I wasn’t there. The Englishwoman who occupies any house of more than six rooms, we will say (which she can keep clean her unaided self), knows that she never can call any room her own, excepting the one she chances to be in at the moment—and not even that one if the British workman happens to be in the ascendant! It is one of the compensations of life that the smaller our habitation, the more we ourselves get out of it personally—a kind of “intensive” interest. Whereas the larger our domains, the more imposing our houses, the more numerous our rooms, the more they are monopolised by other people—paid assistants for the most part—to the exclusion of ourselves.
In my own very humble way I soon realised that even my country cottage and its contents were only my own so long as I could sit on them, so to speak. I early discovered that my sheets and pillow-cases, my towels and tablecloths, were not allowed to lead a life of idle, selfish exclusiveness in my absences. Mrs. Widow’s enterprising married daughter quickly furnished a room at her own cottage over an outhouse which had hitherto been used as a lumber garret; this she could always let in the summer, when the big houses in the neighbourhood were full up with visitors and extra rooms were needed.
Of course, at times I proved exceedingly tiresome, and turned up at inconvenient moments. But in such an emergency neighbours would assist her with the loan of a sheet here and there and a towel or two, if mine had to be returned hastily. I have always found the poor most ready to help each other—especially when it was a case of “doing” someone who was a little better off.
No, I was not surprised that Mrs. Widow graciously bestowed my door-key on her friends in search of an afternoon’s recreation; but I was just a trifle curious to know how they had got hold of the lilac bedspread, seeing that it was put away in a cupboard that possessed—so I prided myself—a unique lock; and it had never been used yet—at least, not by me!
After dinner I wrestled womanfully with the overpowering desire to go down the orchard again and do nothing; but a shower seemed threatening, and I decided to answer letters and correct proofs indoors. I told myself I would put in a full afternoon at really solid work, and would even carry it right on into the night, if need be, without a moment’s cessation save for the conventional nourishment—this, in order to clear up some of my arrears, and to enable me to garden the whole of next day with a perky conscience.
“How do you kill time on a wet day in the country?” people sometimes ask me. It’s simple enough. Here is the recipe:
* Draw up a chair to the table; get out ink and pens from one of the aged oak cupboards beside the fireplace. Open the dresser drawers and haul out stacks of unanswered queries from magazine readers, the office staff, printers, block-makers, artists, authors, and from people of whom I know nothing (friends and relatives gave me up long ago!).
Next, take the heavy lid right off the oak chest (hinges were broken fifty years ago, so it won’t lift up properly), dive in for armfuls of MSS., proofs, photographs, diagrams, sketches; place same on table; proceed to hunt among same for some one particular thing I feel I ought to deal with at that particular moment (though it may have lain unhonoured and unsung for weeks); can’t find it anywhere. Go through everything again, this time classifying matter slightly by putting it in piles around me on the floor; still can’t find it, but unearth much else that ought to have been attended to long ago but wasn’t.