“This whole proposition—Beg pardon; I didn't mean to use that word; we've heard enough concerning 'propositions'—but really, Hephzy, 'Leatherhead' is very appropriate for us. If we weren't leather-headed and deserving of leather medals we should not be hunting houses at all. We should have left Little Frank and her affairs in a lawyer's hands and be enjoying ourselves as we intended. Leatherhead for the leather-heads; it's another dispensation of Providence.”
“Ash Dump”—“Clump,” I mean—was owned by a person named Cripps, Solomon Cripps. Mr. Cripps was a stout, mutton-chopped individual, strongly suggestive of Bancroft's “Henry.” He was rather pompous and surly when I first knocked at the door of his residence, but when he learned we were house-hunting and had our eyes upon the “Clump,” he became very polite indeed. “A 'eavenly spot,” he declared it to be. “A beautiful neighborhood. Near the shops and not far from the Primitive Wesleyan chapel.” He and Mrs. Cripps attended the chapel, he informed us.
I did not fancy Mr. Cripps; he was too—too something, I was not sure what. And Mrs. Cripps, whom we met later, was of a similar type. They, like everyone else, recognized us as Americans at once and they spoke highly of the “States.”
“A very fine country, I am informed,” said Mr. Cripps. “New, of course, but very fine indeed. Young men make money there. Much money—yes.”
Mrs. Cripps wished to know if Americans were a religious people, as a rule. Religion, true spiritual religion was on the wane in England.
I gathered that she and her husband were doing their best to keep it up to the standard. I had read, in books by English writers, of the British middle-class Pharisee. I judged the Crippses to be Pharisees.
Hephzy's opinion was like mine.
“If ever there was a sanctimonious hypocrite it's that Mrs. Cripps,” she declared. “And her husband ain't any better. They remind me of Deacon Hardy and his wife back home. He always passed the plate in church and she was head of the sewin' circle, but when it came to lettin' go of an extry cent for the minister's salary they had glue on their fingers. Father used to say that the Deacon passed the plate himself so nobody could see how little he put in it. They were the ones that always brought a stick of salt herrin' to the donation parties.”
We didn't like the Crippses, but we did like “Ash Clump.” We had almost decided to take it when our plans were quashed by the member of our party on whose account we had planned solely. Miss Morley flatly refused to go to Leatherhead.
“Don't ask ME why,” said Hephzy, to whom the refusal had been made. “I don't know. All I know is that the very name 'Leatherhead' turned her whiter than she has been for a week. She just put that little foot of hers down and said no. I said 'Why not?' and she said 'Never mind.' So I guess we sha'n't be Leatherheaded—in that way—this summer.”