“After all,” she said at last, “it is for Etruria to decide.”
“No, it is for us both to decide,” he replied. And then, as if he thought that he had sufficiently stated his case, “I ask your pardon, Miss Audley, for intruding,” he continued. “I am keeping you, and as I am going your way that is needless. I have had a message from a sick woman, and I am on my way to see her.”
He took permission for granted, and though Etruria’s very shoulders forbade him, he moved on beside them. “Conditions are better here than in many places,” he said, “but in this village you would see much to sadden you.”
“I have seen enough,” Mary answered, “to know that.”
“Ten years ago there was not a house here. Now there is a population of two thousand, no church, no school, no gentry, no one of the better class. There is a kind of club, a centre of wild talk; better that, perhaps, than apathy.”
“Is it in Riddsley parish?” Mary asked. They were nearly clear of the houses, and the slopes of the hill, pale green in the peaceful evening light, began to rise on either side. It was growing dusk, and from the moorland above came the shrill cries of plovers.
“Yes, it is in Riddsley parish,” he answered, “but many miles from the town, and as aloof from it—Riddsley is purely agricultural—as black from white. In such places as this—and there are many of them in Staffordshire, as raw, as rough, and as new—there is work for plain men and plain women. In these swarming hives there is no room for any refinement but true refinement. And the Church must learn to do her work with plain tools, or the work will pass into other hands.”
“You may cut cheese with an onion knife,” Etruria said coldly. “I don’t know that people like it.”
“I know nothing better than onions in the right place,” he replied.
“That’s not in cheese,” she rejoined, to Mary’s amusement.