“I’m town-bred, you know,” said Blanche. “We’ve got an awful lot to learn, Millie and me.”
“You’ll learn quickly enough,” was the answer. “You’ll have to.”
“I suppose,” returned Blanche.
At the end of the orchard through which they had been passing they came to a knoll, crowned by a great elm. Round the trunk of the elm a rough seat had been fixed, and here Aunt May sat down with a sigh of relief.
“It’s a blessed thing to earn your own bread day by day,” she said. “It’s a beautiful thing to live near the earth and feel physically tired at night. It’s delightful to be primitive and agricultural, and I love it. But I have a civilized vice, Blanche. I have a store of cigarettes I stole from a shop in Harrow, and every night when it’s fine I come out here after supper and smoke three; and when it’s wet I smoke ’em in my own bedroom, and—I dream. But to-night I’m going to talk to you, because you want help.”
She produced a cigarette case and matches from a side pocket of her jacket, lit a cigarette, inhaled the smoke with a long gasp of intensest enjoyment, and then said: “Men weren’t fools, my dear; they had pockets in their coats.”
“Yes?” said Blanche. She felt puzzled and a little awkward. She knew that this woman was a friend, but the girl’s town-bred, objective mind was critical and embarrassed.
“Do you smoke?” asked Aunt May. “I can spare you a cigarette, though I know the time must come when there won’t be any more. Still, it’s a long way off yet. Bless the clever man who invented air-tight tins!”
“No, I don’t smoke, thanks,” replied Blanche, conventionally; and, try as she would, she could not keep some hint of stiffness out of her voice. Modern manners take a long time to influence suburban homes of the Wisteria Grove type.
“Ah! well, you miss a lot!” said Aunt May; “but you’re better without it, especially now, when tobacco isn’t easy to get, and will soon be impossible.”