“But why,” said Sophie, as they went back through the crater of stricken fields,—“why is one expected to know everything in England? Why do they never tell?”
“You mean about the Elphicks and the Moones?” he answered.
“Yes—and the lawyers and the estate. Who are they? I wonder whether those painted floors in the green room were real oak. Don't you like us exploring things together—better than Pompeii?”
George turned once more to look at the view. “Eight hundred acres go with the house—the old man told me. Five farms altogether. Rocketts is one of 'em.”
“I like Mrs. Cloke. But what is the old house called?”
George laughed. “That's one of the things you're expected to know. He never told me.”
The Clokes were more communicative. That evening and thereafter for a week they gave the Chapins the official history, as one gives it to lodgers, of Friars Pardon the house and its five farms. But Sophie asked so many questions, and George was so humanly interested, that, as confidence in the strangers grew, they launched, with observed and acquired detail, into the lives and deaths and doings of the Elphicks and the Moones and their collaterals, the Haylings and the Torrells. It was a tale told serially by Cloke in the barn, or his wife in the dairy, the last chapters reserved for the kitchen o' nights by the big fire, when the two had been half the day exploring about the house, where old Iggulden, of the blue smock, cackled and chuckled to see them. The motives that swayed the characters were beyond their comprehension; the fates that shifted them were gods they had never met; the sidelights Mrs. Cloke threw on act and incident were more amazing than anything in the record. Therefore the Chapins listened delightedly, and blessed Mrs. Shonts.
“But why—why—why—did So-and-so do so-and-so?” Sophie would demand from her seat by the pothook; and Mrs. Cloke would answer, smoothing her knees, “For the sake of the place.”
“I give it up,” said George one night in their own room. “People don't seem to matter in this country compared to the places they live in. The way she tells it, Friars Pardon was a sort of Moloch.”
“Poor old thing!” They had been walking round the farms as usual before tea. “No wonder they loved it. Think of the sacrifices they made for it. Jane Elphick married the younger Torrell to keep it in the family. The octagonal room with the moulded ceiling next to the big bedroom was hers. Now what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs?” said Sophie.