“Oh yes, the old fisherman’s wife down by the cliff.”
“Yes; and Aunt Matty went to see her, and talked to her in her way, and it made the old lady so cross that—that—oh, I mustn’t tell you.”
“Nonsense, child, go on.”
“She—she told Aunt Matty to go along and get married,” tittered Fin, “and she could stay at home and mend her husband’s stockings, and leave people alone; and Aunt Matty thought it so horrible that she came home and went to bed.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Mr Mervyn. “Mrs Poltrene has a temper; but here we are—you’ll come in?”
Tiny was for drawing back, but her sister prevailed. They had been walking along the lane, and had now reached a long, low cottage, built after the fashion of the district, with massive blocks of granite, and roofed with slabs of the same. There was a strip of garden, though gardens were almost needless, banked up as the place was on all sides with the luxuriant wild growth of the valley. On one side, though, of the doorway was the simple old fuchsia of bygone days, with a stem here as thick as a man’s wrist—a perfect fuchsia tree, in fact; and on the other side, leafing and flowering right over the roof, a gigantic hydrangea, the flower we see in eastern England in pots, but here of a delicious blue.
“Any one at home,” said Mr Mervyn, walking straight in. “Here, Mrs Trelyan, I’ve brought you two visitors,” and a very old, white-haired woman, who was making a pilchard net, held her hand over her forehead.
“Sit down, girls—sit down,” she said, in the melodious sing-song voice of the Cornish people. “I know them—they come and see me sometimes. Eh? How am I? But middling—but middling. It’s been a bad season for me. Oh, soup? Ah, you’ve brought me some more soup; you may empty it into that basin. I didn’t want it; but you may leave it. They’ve brought me up some hake and a few herrings, so I could have got on without. That last soup was too salt, master.”
“Was it?” said Mr Mervyn, giving a merry glance at Fin. “Well, never mind, I’ll speak to Mrs Dykes about it.”
“Ay, she’s an east-country woman. Those folks don’t know much about cooking. Well, young ladies, I hear you have been to London.”