Pastorals of Dorset

by M. E. Francis

“Walk in, Mrs. Andrews, dear, do ’ee now, an’ sit ye down. Tommy!—that bain’t never Tommy a-cryin’, I’m sure. And here’s little Walter a-sittin’ so good in his pram, bless his little ’eart—he wouldn’t cry. Come in, come in, and see what Mrs. Stickly have a-got ye. A little bird did tell I as there was a slice o’ bread an’ sugar in the cupboard for two good boys. I wonder who they can be! Come in, Mrs. Andrews, an’ rest ye a bit; I’ve got the tea drawed all ready, down here in the chimbley corner—he’ll be nice and strong, for he’ve a-been made nigh half a hour.”

“’Tis wonderful kind o’ you, Mrs. Stickly,” Mrs. Andrews would probably return, jamming the pram into a convenient angle behind the door-post, and heaving a weary sigh as she entered the cosy little kitchen. “’Tis what I should never ha’ thought on, I’m sure. I should never ha’ looked for sich a thing. But a cup o’ tea is a blessin’ when a body have been so far as I’ve been. Two lumps, if you please—thank you—that’ll do nice. Sit ye down, Tommy, and Walter, stand here quiet aside o’ me. If you be good little boys, Mrs. Stickly ’ull maybe show you the rosy plate afore we do go home.”

Then Tommy and Walter would munch their bread-and-sugar in blissful silence, and make themselves amazingly sticky, and stare with all their might at the crimson-bedecked trophy which gleamed down at them from its eminence on the dresser. And when Mrs. Andrews had drunk her tea, and told her kind hostess all her troubles—how her master was only working four days a week, or how Teddie had got sore eyes, or how Susanna had an impression on her chest, or, perhaps, how she herself had been that bad last week with a sore throat that if anybody had comed to her wi’ a cup o’ tea in one hand and a poker in the other, she would have been forced to choose the poker; and when Mrs. Stickly had duly groaned and shaken her head in sympathy, the desire of the “twin” was acceded to, and the rosy plate was carefully taken down and submitted to the admiring inspection of the two pairs of round sloe-black eyes.

Mrs. Andrews well knew that this little ceremony caused quite as much pleasure to Mrs. Stickly as to the children, and it was, perhaps, on this account chiefly that she asked for it, and that, moreover, busy as she was, with a thousand odd jobs waiting for her at home, she lingered a little longer in order to hearken to the oft-told tale of the rosy plate, and of all that it represented to its owner. Leaning back in Mrs. Stickly’s best chair with the patchwork cushion, and the knitted antimacassar astride on its shiny wooden back, she would fold her arms, heave a sigh of sentimental reminiscence, and remark tentatively:

“Dear, yes, Mrs. Stickly, they poor innocents don’t have no notion of all as that there pretty plate have a-brought about. Nay, that they haven’t. But ye could tell a tale about that plate, couldn’t ’ee, Mrs. Stickly?”

“Ah, that I could,” the old woman would say, swallowing the bait eagerly. “My poor husband, you know—Stickly—he did give it I when first he was a-coortin’ me.”

“So I think I’ve heard you say,” Mrs. Andrews would return, with placid interest. “Ye’d jist a-had a miff afore he give it ye.”

“E—es, we did have a bit of a miff that time; and we shouldn’t never ha’ made it up, I don’t think, if Stickly hadn’t give me the rosy plate.”

“He did buy it for ’ee at Shroton, didn’t he?” Mrs. Andrews would say, needing perhaps to recall her hostess to the present by some such reminder, for frequently, when talking of these far-away times, Mrs. Stickly’s faded blue eyes would assume a dreamy look, and it would become evident that her thoughts had strayed away from her interlocutrix to the bygone days, when she was a handsome young lass, and Stickly and his peers had come “a-coortin’.”

“Ah, he did buy it for I there—there was more nor him did want to buy it for I. Dear heart alive, I can mind it so well as if it were yesterday. I were reckoned a good-lookin’ maid in those days—I did use to have a very good colour, and my hair was curly and yollow—as yollow as the corn, Stickly did say sometimes—and there was a good many arter me one way and another. There was Tom Boyt—a farmer’s son he were—and there was ’Neas Stuckhey—”