"I must ask 'him,'" said she.
And when she did ask "him," he said it would interfere with his regular customers! So that settled it; and I found somewhere in the neighbourhood that suited me better, and everybody was satisfied.
I stayed at a little farm where the husband worked "in the pits," and helped his wife with the farm in his spare time. The wife was such a neat, bright, pretty young thing. The husband was on night-shifts, and came home for his supper (or was it breakfast?) at five o'clock in the morning, so I used to have my breakfast at the same hour, and get off early. I think my record-day on the Wall started at 5.30 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m.—a long June day.
I used to bicycle along Wade's Road, leave my bicycle at the farm nearest to where I wanted to paint, and then walk from point to point along the Wall, with perhaps four different sketches going on, at the different periods of the day. Having started off one morning at 6 a.m., I wanted somewhere to leave my bicycle. A little house with an enclosed garden looked suitable, so I jumped off, and then saw to my amusement that a horse was standing looking in at the little bedroom window under the eaves, from which a hurried voice was calling to him: "I'm a-coming; I'm a-coming." Presently an old lady appeared, and I asked permission to leave my bicycle, saying I should be gone all day. She answered: "What odds? A'll be here." She then introduced the horse. "He always looks for his corn at half-past six sharp." And I often saw him after that, at the window. When I returned in the evening, rather late, the old lady said: "I was feart ye was fallen into t' Lough;" and then she produced my bicycle from a shed: "I thocht ye didna want yer tyres brusten wi' the sun."
But I have wandered a long way from Peel Crag. I did not need to go to "Twice Brewed" for tea; I was fortunate in having a friend near by who had often made tea for me when I was painting on the Wall. And to her I went now. I found she had visitors. A great event had taken place in the neighbourhood the night before; there had been a local subscription dance in the barn of Twice Brewed Farm (or East Twice Brewed, as it is sometimes called. It was the Inn in Hutton's time). The people "out-by" had never had such an opportunity before, though "in-by," at Haltwhistle, there were dances in plenty. Three of the dancers were calling—bonny young girls whose first dance it had been, and they were full of it. "It was champion!"—or "It was terrible nice!" (their highest terms of praise). They had breakfasted at five o'clock in the morning before going to bed. One of them had done her hair up for the first time in honour of the occasion. "There was a pocket of hairpins in it, more hairpins than hair, and yet it wouldn't keep up!" And so they ran on, while I enjoyed the "berry-cake" and gingerbread for which my hostess was famous. She was busy making one of the wadded quilts which one sees so often along the line of the Wall. And their rag-carpets, or "stubbed mats," as they call them, are sometimes like bits of stained glass! They frequently dye the cloth themselves, the exact colour they want, and make very elaborate and rich designs.
And now we come to Winshields, the highest point to which the Wall rises, 1230 feet above the sea. Below, on the left, is a farm-house known as "The Bog," and south of that, very near to Wade's Road, runs the Vallum.
It is impossible to miss the line of the Wall in the high regions, for it is always on the ridge. I cycled out one day through Caw Gap to the hamlet of Edges Green, along one of the little-used roads that run north into the lonely wastes, in order to make a sketch of Winshields from "out-by," that is to say, from the country to the north of the Wall. I had barely finished this sketch when a brilliant flash of lightning warned me to move, and it was soon followed by thunder and heavy rain. I found shelter, and a kind welcome (which included tea, as usual!) in the nearest house. My good hostess apologized for having "nothing" to give me for tea, because she lived so far "out-by," but I found an abundant spread—cheese, jam, scones, two kinds of cake, and white and brown bread. I wondered what "something" would have been! When it came to paying, she said: "Oh, it's nothin'; it's just a drink o' tea."
She had lived there twenty-one years, and told me they were often snowed up in winter and had to dig themselves out. "But we're nothin' to some folks," she added; "we're 'out-by' to Hautwissel, but we're 'in-by' to Hope-Alone!" She was referring to a lonely farm 2 miles farther north, standing at a height of 900 feet.
The works of the Vallum are splendid, as seen from the top of Winshields; the eye can follow them for a great distance. The best developed section is at Cawfields.
And the view is wide and beautiful, especially on such a changeable day as this, with all round a tumble of brilliant white clouds on a blue sky, but with heavy masses of black appearing in the east, and gradually blotting out the hills. Presently there is a change; the clouds break, and patches of sunlight begin to dance on the hills, which but a moment before were obscured. The rays of the sun are like a moving finger, tracing out the form of distant farm, and tree, and wall, on the hillside, and then passing on.