After breakfast she had another nap, and after lunch still another, and in the intervals wandered about the farm-yard, laboriously striving to take an interest in what really interested her not at all. Hens seemed to her the dullest of created creatures, pigs repelled, cows were regarded with uneasy suspicion, and sheep, seen close at hand, lost all the picturesque quality of a distant flock, and became stupid long-faced creatures, by no means as clean as they might be. Milking-time aroused no ambition to experiment on her own account, and a glass of foaming new milk proved unexpectedly nauseous. Sad as it was to confess it, she infinitely preferred the chalked and watered edition of the city!
Indoors things were no better, for the tiny sitting-room stood by itself at the end of a passage, cut off from the life of the house. It was spotlessly clean and the pride of its owner’s heart, but contained nothing of interest to an outsider. Pictures there were none, with the exception of portraits of the farmer and his wife, of the enlarged photograph type, and a selection of framed funeral cards in a corner. Books there were none, with the exception of a catalogue of an Agricultural Show, and a school prize copy of Black Beauty. Before the second night was over Claire had read Black Beauty from cover to cover; the next morning she was dipping into the catalogue, and trying to concentrate her attention on “stock.”
As her body grew rested, Claire’s mind became increasingly active. It was inevitable, but the second stage was infinitely harder to bear. For the first hours after her arrival her supreme longing had been to lie down and shut her eyes; but now restlessness overtook her, and with every fresh hour drove her more helplessly to and fro. She went out for long walks over the countryside, her thoughts so engrossingly turned inward that she saw nothing of the landscape on either hand; she returned to the house and endeavoured to write, to read, to sew, only to give up the attempt at the end of half an hour, and once more wander helplessly forth.
The good countrywoman was quick to sense that some hidden trouble was preying on her guest, and showed her sympathy in practical fashion.
“A bit piney-like, aren’t you? I seed from the first that you was piney-like,” she said, standing tray in hand on the threshold of the little parlour, her fresh, highly-coloured face smiling kindly upon the pale girl. “I always do say that I pities ladies when they has anything on their minds; sitting about, same as you do now, with nothing to take them off theirselves. A body like me that has to keep a house clean, and cook and wash, and mind the children, to say naught of the sewing and the mending, and looking after the cows and the hens, and all the extra fusses and worries that come along, she hasn’t got no time to remember herself, and when she gets to bed she’s too tired to think. Now if you was to have some work—”
Claire’s face brightened with a sudden inspiration.
“Will you give me some work? Let me help you! Do, please, Mrs Corby; I’d be so grateful. Let me come into the kitchen and do something now. I feel so lonely shut off here, all by myself.”
Mrs Corby laughed, her fat comfortable laugh.
“Bless your ’art, you can come along and welcome. I’ll be proud to have you. It ain’t much you know of housework, I expect, but it’ll do you no harm to learn. I’ll find you some little jobs.”
“Oh, I’m not so useless as you think. I can brush and dust, and polish, and wash up, and I know a good deal about cooking. I’ll make a salad to eat with the cold meat—a real French salad. I’m sure Mr Corby would enjoy a French salad,” cried Claire, glancing out of the window at the well-stocked kitchen garden, and thinking of the wet lettuce and uncut onions, which were the good woman’s idea of the dish in question. “May I make one to-day?”