“Thank you! Will you assist me in one other matter? I must contrive somehow to ride to Tideswell tomorrow, to make some necessary purchases, and the deuce is in it that I’ve no notion of what, precisely, I should ask for. I must have some tolerable soap, for instance, but it won’t do just to demand soap, will it? Ten to one, I should find myself with something smelling of violets, or worse. Then there’s coffee. I can’t and I won’t drink beer with my breakfast, and barring some porter, the dregs of a bottle of rum, and a bottle of bad tape, that’s all I can find in the place. Tell me what coffee I should buy! I’ll make a note of it on my list.”
Her eyes were alight. “I think I had better take a look at your list,” she decided.
“Will you? I shall be much obliged to you! I’ll fetch it,” he said.
She followed him into the toll-house, and he turned to find her standing in the kitchen doorway, and looking critically about her. “Enough to make poor Mrs. Brean turn in her grave!” she remarked. “She was the neatest creature! However, I daresay Mrs. Skeffling will set it to rights, if she is to come here every day. Is this your list?”
She held out her hand, and he gave it to her. It made her laugh. “Good heavens, you seem to need a great deal! Candles? Are there none in the store-cupboard?”
“Yes, tallow dips. Have you ever, ma’am, sat in a small room that was lit by tallow dips?”
“No, never!”
“Then take my advice, and do not!”
“I won’t. But wax candles in a kitchen! Mrs. Skeffling will talk of it all over the village. Soap—blacking—brushes—tea—” She raised her eyes from the list. “Pray, how do you propose to convey all these things from Tideswell, Captain Staple?”
“I imagine there must be a carrier?”