“Is it?” she asked innocently, letting her clear gaze follow Tommy’s. “You don’t believe, Mr. Atlas, that modest people like you, and me, and Tommy, and the Copleys, incur danger in being too comfortable; the trouble lies in the fact that the other half is too uncomfortable, does it not? But I am just beginning to think of these things,” she added soberly.
“Egeria,” said Mrs. Jack sternly, “you may think about them as much as you like; I have no control over your mental processes, but if you mention single tax, or tenement-house reform, or Socialism, or altruism, or communism, or the sweating system, you will be dropped at Bideford. Atlas is only travelling with us because he needs complete moral and intellectual rest. I hope, oh, how I hope, that there isn’t a social problem in Clovelly! It seems as if there couldn’t be, in a village of a single street and that a stone staircase.”
“There will be,” I said, “if nothing more than the problem of supply and demand; of catching and selling herrings.”
We had time at Bideford to go into a quaint little shop for tea before starting on our twelve-mile drive; time also to be dragged by Tommy to Bideford Bridge, that played so important a part in Kingsley’s “Westward Ho!” We did not approach Clovelly finally through the beautiful Hobby Drive, laid out in former years by one of the Hamlyn ladies of Clovelly Court, but by the turnpike road, which, however, was not uninteresting. It had been market-day at Bideford and there were many market carts and “jingoes” on the road, with perhaps a heap of yellow straw inside and a man and a rosy boy on the seat. The roadway was prettily bordered with broom, wild honeysuckle, fox-glove, and single roses, and there was a certain charming post-office called the Fairy Cross, in a garden of blooming fuchsias, where Egeria almost insisted upon living and officiating as postmistress.
All at once our driver checked his horses on the brink of a hill, apparently leading nowhere in particular.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Jack, who is always expecting accidents.
“Clovelly, mum.”
“Clovelly!” we repeated automatically, gazing about us on every side for a roof, a chimney, or a sign of habitation.
“You’ll find it, mum, as you walk down-along.”
“How charming!” cried Egeria, who loves the picturesque. “Towns are generally so obtrusive; isn’t it nice to know that Clovelly is here and that all we have to do is to walk ‘down-along’ and find it? Come, Tommy. Ho, for the stone staircase!”