“‘Mrs Dick,’ quoted Geoffrey,—‘your common sense is invaluable!’ and off he started in advance while we all trailed in the rear, along the dusty high-road this time, and not by any means in a singing mood. Esmeralda stalked, and Honor limped. She hadn’t done it a bit before, so it came on rather suddenly, and Stanor offered her his arm, and she hung upon it, and Mr Carr talked politics to me, and I tried to quote Dick’s remarks and appear intelligent, but it didn’t come off.
“It was a mile, and more. It seemed like three, and when we arrived at the opening the car was not there. We sat down against the dusty hedgerow and gave way to despair. Here we were stranded five weary miles from our base, i.e. the hampers, and what were we going to do? Every one had a different suggestion, but the object of them all was the same—get something to eat. It’s humiliating how greedy people become when they are defrauded of a meal! Dawson and the car were forgotten, everything was forgotten, and when I said that doctors were agreed that we ate too much, and an occasional starve was the most healthy thing that could happen, they looked coldly on me, and Stanor said doctors might keep their theories, but give him foie gras! Finally we agreed to be scouts and go forth on a foraging expedition through the tiny village, seeking what we might devour. Geoffrey was the scout-master, and we were to meet him at the second lamp-post and report.
“There were half a dozen cottages, one shop, and a yard where they sold coal and fresh eggs. So that meant a cottage each, and the stores thrown in. Our orders were to knock on each door and stand close so as to have a good view of the interior when it was opened. If it was a dirty interior we were to dissemble, and ask the way; if it was clean, we were to say, ‘Oh, if you please, we are stranded motorists, and do you supply plain teas?’ In case of two being clean, the choice was to be left with the scout-master, who would decide between them with tact and discretion.
“Bridgie, it was sport! They were all clean, and they all supplied plain teas, but the astounding part was that no one could supply milk! (Esmeralda says she has never yet raided an English cottage where they could.) And they all offered the same bill of fare—tea with tinned milk, eggs, and spring onions! We chose the biggest and airiest cottage, ordered eggs, looked haughtily at onions, adjourned to the village store and tried to discover some accessories among the rope, firewood, and linoleum. There was tinned salmon, but Esmeralda said she objected to us dying on her hands, and loaf sugar, and treacle, and bull’s-eyes in a glass bottle, and gingerbread biscuits (but the snap had departed, and they were so soft that you could have rolled them in balls), and some very strong-looking cheese, and rows of dried herrings packed in a box.
“It was Hobson’s choice, so we bought a herring apiece, and insisted on having each one wrapped up in paper, and carrying it across the road in our own separate hands, and I bought a pound of bull’s-eyes. They are such encouraging things on a long walk!
“It was a delicious tea. The milk was rather greasy and hard to mix, but if you didn’t think about it, it tasted almost as good as real, the eggs were fresh, and the herrings so good that Stanor ran across the road for more, and we made time with bread and butter until they were cooked. And we gave not a thought to the motor; it was only when the sixth plate of bread and butter had been eaten to a crumb that we remembered the miles between us and the nearest station. Five or six it was, nothing to trouble ordinary people, even if they would have preferred a comfortable car, but there was Honor! She had slipped off her shoe under the table, and when she tried to put it on again it hurt so badly that she could hardly hobble across the room, and there was not a vehicle within miles.
“We all fussed and wondered what could be done, except Mr Carr, who strolled calmly out of the house without a word, lighting a cigarette as he went, and after that Honor’s foot got so suddenly worse that the tears came to her eyes. Five minutes later when we were still fussing and settling nothing, back he came, and in his hands, what do you think?—you’d never guess—a pair of men’s carpet slippers! I remember in a dim, sub-conscious fashion having seen them hanging up in drab and crimson bunches from the ceiling of the shop, but it had never occurred to me that they were to wear!”
“‘You can walk in these!’ said Mr Carr coolly, and without waiting to hear Honor’s reply, he went down on his knees, and began unbuttoning her shoe. She has the daintiest mite of a foot you ever saw—it looked like a doll’s in his big, strong hand—but she wasn’t a bit grateful. There was a look on her face which sent all the others crowding to the door, but she glared at me to stay, and, being curious, I obeyed.
“‘Mr Carr,’ says she,—‘this is too much! It is usual in my country for a man to ask a girl what she wants, before he takes it upon himself to dictate!’
“He went on unfastening the shoe.