“You’ve took no hurt,” said her hostess. “You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.”
Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. “No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?”
Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly—she never hurried—and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.
“What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?” Mrs. Fettley inquired with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.
Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. “Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.”
“Ourn, at Keyneslade,” said Mrs. Fettley, “she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.”
“This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.”
“Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it....” Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. “Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!”
The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday “shopping” ’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.
“You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,” Mrs. Ashcroft observed.