“Mrs. Radford!” Mrs. Tregennis had never before addressed her lodger by name, so it was all the more impressive. “Mrs. Radford, I’ll not hear one word against our ladies. They haven’t thought fit to tell me who they be, and ’tis no business of mine. Shop girls or no, I cannot say, but they’m real ladies, whatever they be, and I’ll not hear a word against them, so there’s where ’tis to.”
“You need not become angry, my good woman. Their appearance is certainly not in their favour, for they are almost shabbily dressed; plain blue and brown Norfolk suits that are by no means new. When they arrived I looked through the window most particularly to see their style of dress, and I may say I was by no means favourably impressed.”
“If you’d like to know, ma’am, they’re the very clothes they wore down here last year, an’ they weren’t new then. Very sootable to Draeth they be to my way of thinkin’. But I don’t want to talk about them to you at all, if you don’t mind, ma’am. It seems sort of an insult to our ladies to be discussin’ their clothes an’ such. And if you’ll ring when you’ve finished, ma’am, I’ll come in again to clear away.”
CHAPTER XII
IT was perfect Easter weather. It was so hot that when you closed your eyes you thought it was the middle of summer, until you opened them and saw, high up on the cliffs, the leafless trees. Still, as always in Draeth, in spite of the heat, the air had that delightful freshness which results from the mingling of the sea-breezes with the winds which blow from the Cornish moorlands.
In every hedge myriads of primroses opened wide and startled eyes to the blue of the sky. Purple violets nestled among the green grass blades. Timidly the hart’s tongue fern unrolled the delicate green of its mitred leaf. The lords and ladies were in flower, and zealously guarded their secret within the closed, mysterious spathe. Over all the blackthorn shed snow-white petals, and the whole air was full of the intoxicating smell of the gorse.
In and out of the hedges darted the mating birds; chaffinches and yellow-hammers, thrushes and blackbirds; robins and linnets; and hedge-sparrows that are not sparrows at all. All together they sang the song of Love and of Springtime, while, on the house-tops in the town, the starlings mocked them all. Such faithful mockery, too, that when you were indoors it was truly bewildering, for you were sure that blackbirds and thrushes were perching on Mrs. Tregennis’s chimney pots, until the sweet whistle ended with the ridiculous squawk that always betrays the starling, and lets you know that you have been befooled.
As the ladies sat at breakfast on Saturday morning a stumble on the stairs heralded Tommy’s approach.