XVI—THE YOUNG BUTCHER OF HIGH WYCOMBE
1
Near Wycombe a woman rose from under the hedge as the Goslings approached, and came out into the middle of the road. She was a stout, florid woman, whose age might have been anything between forty and fifty. Her gait and the droop of her shoulders, rather than the flaccidity of her rather loose skin, gave her the appearance of being past middle age.
“Goot morning,” she said as the Goslings came up. “If it iss no inconvenience I would like to come with you.” She spoke with a foreign accent, thickening her final consonants and giving a different value to some of her vowels.
“Where to?” asked Blanche curtly.
“Ah! that! what does it matter?” returned the woman. “I have been living with a farmer’s wife further back along the road there. But she was not company for me. She was common. Now I see that you and your mother are not common. And I do not care to live with farmers’ wives. But where we go? Does it matter? We all go to find work in the fields—aristocrat as much as peasant. But iss it not better that we who are not peasants should go together?”
Millie giggled surreptitiously, and Mrs Gosling appeared conscious of the fact that some one was addressing them.
“We’re goin’ ’ome,” she remarked, and Millie gently prodded her in the back.
“Goin’ ’ome,” repeated Mrs Gosling firmly.