“That be Arlsfield village, missis,” explained Tebbits, pointing a two-mile-distant cluster of buildings above which the smoke spired lazily. “You can’t see the Hall from here. Them big chestnuts do hide it. Too close to the Hall, they be: and often I’ve told the old Colonel so myself. But he’s that set on his trees. . . .”
“What’s the name of the Hall?” interrupted Pat.
“Arlsfield Hall, mum.”
And, for the second time, the name sounded familiar. Indeed in all that smiling prospect—jade fields of young wheat, emerald of pasture, trees and village and far-away river—only one feature puzzled Patricia. The oily magnolia-leaves at window-sill, she seemed to know; and the ochre gravel below, and every detail of the sloping country beyond them. But the slip of orchard, foaming in wave on wave of wave-green grass and snow-white blossom between her terrace and the country-side, her strange inward memories could not recall.
“Planted they trees ’bout twenty-five years ago. Good trees they be, too. Blenheims mostly,” said Tebbits. . . .
It was long after five when Patricia finished her inspection. “Likely, you’d care for a dish of tea, missis,” invited the old man: and to tea in Mr. Tebbits’ kitchen the three went.
Miss Tebbits—she was sixty and the old man’s daughter all over, from thin lips to the hair in her ears,—served them their “dish of tea” in china which had no right to exist outside a museum; brought home-made cake, home-made bread, a great dish of saffron butter: and while the daughter served, her father talked.
“He didn’t believe in leases,” he told Patricia. “If so be she wanted the house, all she had to do was to say so. He’d always got his sixty pounds a year for it: ’cept when people didn’t keep stock. Then he took fifty-five. ’Twas a bit dear like, but his son Charlie wouldn’t have him take less. . . .” And here the old man explained how Charlie had moved the building business to Arlsfield, leaving him and Harry with the farm. “I be a bit old for the building, missis. Turned eighty-five. But Charlie, he’ll do all the papering and the painting for you. We don’t let any one ’cept ourselves touch our houses. . . .”
Tea over, he stood cap-in-hand to bid them good-bye.
“We’ll be down again tomorrow, Mr. Tebbits,” smiled Patricia, engine throbbing under her finger on the throttle-lever.