"Of course I'll promise! And I'll do it! Won't we, mother?"
"The foolish boy with his poetry-ideas! Of course we will! Nu, shen, nu, thou art happy now? He will say to me a poetry, Channah, and thou must go this moment to boil thyself an egg! Go thou, go, tochterel!"
"That's all right!" murmured Philip. Before him waved green banners of grass towards the foothills, and white clouds sailed aloof over broken peaks.... "That's all right, mother! And if you forget that kuggel ..."
CHAPTER XIII
For the first day at Wenton Philip was almost drunk with the abrupt change from Doomington to the fresh air and the hills. The atmosphere in Wenton House, to be sure, was a little chilly. The relentless cleanliness of each conceivable detail was disturbing. The flaky boiled potatoes served up for midday dinner, Philip's first meal in the House, compared a little disagreeably with the potatoes baked in abundant fat as prepared by Mrs. Massel and only less ably by Dorah. There occurred also a slight contretemps with the implements for pudding. It seemed that most of the boys who sat at Philip's table had paid earlier visits to Wenton House: for Mrs. Kraft, as she stood at the door to receive her junior guests, was able, though the scheduled fortnight was only just beginning, to inquire from one youth, "Well, Abey, and did you get that job in the shipping office?" and from another, "Tell me, Hyman, is the other sister married yet?" and to warn a third, "I hope you will not throw stones, Jackie, at the Christian boys in the village! I get blamed for it, and it won't do, it won't do!" To Philip she said, a smile emerging from the grimace of matronal hospitality, "What did you say your name was? Philip Massel? And how old? Oh, of course, Mr. Furness told me, getting on for sixteen! Well, we're glad to see you, Philip! See you have a good time!"
Far chillier than Mrs. Kraft were the boiled potatoes, and chillier the pictures on the walls. Wenton House was not wholly self-supporting; only the charity of several benevolent individuals in Doomington rendered a country fortnight possible to the boys on the easy terms of their acceptance. Hence perhaps the legends below the pictures, "How ready is the arm of Charity!" "Charity, the Handmaiden of God!"
Yet, despite the slight constriction in the atmosphere engendered by these details, the sight of Winckley Pike beyond the wide window of the dining-room, and the quick cry of swallows and the smell of clover atoned for the hygienic potatoes, and made of the pictured legends mere ingenuous statements of fact. The country was not so overwhelming a revolution in the mind of Philip as might have been expected. Poetry had long ago made real enough the unseen hills and the unsmelled blossoms. Bluebell Bank had given concreteness as well as subjective reality to his dreams, and such excursions into the country for a whole day as he had experienced several times, with Dorah once, with Harry and Alec once, and twice with a master at school, had continued the process of revelation. They had once climbed Bracken Hill to see far off the triangular mass of Winckley Pike, and beyond, the more desolate moors and the jagged hills.
It was at tea-time that he first thoroughly became aware of the dark eyes of a lady, a young lady, a lady who was chiefly dark eyes. He had had a dim feeling during dinner that some inexplicable thing was causing a disturbance in his blood. He had given it no name. It may have been nervousness merely due to the new surroundings. But at tea-time he ascertained quite clearly that among the ladies of appallingly mature age seated round the table between his own table and the windows, a young lady not fearfully much older than himself, was lifting lettuce to her virginal lips. She was sixteen, perhaps seventeen, certainly not eighteen! They were nice lips for eating lettuce with, but they were nothing to compare with her eyes. Dark eyes, a bit languishing and long, with long lashes. He wondered what she was doing there amid her staider companions. He wondered what the colour of her dark eyes really was. Would you call it brown, or a sort of deep shade of grey? He became aware of her awareness of him. She was conscious of his scrutiny and the dark eyes stared scorn. A chit of a boy like him! He realized he had held his cup of tea for long seconds arrested on its journey to his lips. He blushed and drained the chilled cup to its last drop. The lady was chattering vivaciously, her eyes quick and lovely, her lettuce-receiving lips making rich, full curves as she spoke.
"Make a good tea, you boys!" came the vigilant injunction of Mrs. Kraft.