III
Seacombe,
July-August.
1
After a hundred miles of dusty road, it is good to snuff the delicately salted air. The bight of the Exe, where we crossed it by steam launch, was only a make-believe for the sea. How wonderfully the slight rippling murmur of a calm sea flows into, and takes possession of one's mind.
I stood by the shore and watched the boats, and was very peaceful. Then I went down the Gut to the house that I guessed was Anthony Widger's. Many children watched me with their eyes opened wide at my knapsack. A pleasant looking old woman—short, stout, charwoman-shaped—came out of the passage just as I raised my hand to knock the open door. "Are you Mrs Widger?" said I.
"Lor' bless 'ee! I ben't Mrs Widger. Here, Annie! Here's a gen'leman to see 'ee."
Mrs Widger, the afternoon Mrs Widger, is a quite slim woman who—strangely enough for a working man's wife—looks a good deal younger than she is. She has rather beautiful light brown hair and dresses tastefully. I am afraid she will not feel complimented if the old woman tells her of my mistake.
Her manner of receiving me indicated plainly a suspended judgment, inclined perhaps towards the favourable. I was shown my room, a little long back room, with ragged wall-paper, and almost filled up by a huge, very flat, squashy bed. After a wash-over (I did not ask for a bath for fear of exposing the lack of one) I went down to tea.
Bread, jam and cream were put before me, together with fairly good hot tea from a blue, smoky, enamelled tin teapot which holds any quantity up to a couple of quarts. Mrs Widger turned two guernseys, a hat, several odd socks, and a boot out of a great chintz-covered chair which lacked one of its arms. To my made conversation she replied shortly:
"Dear me!" "My!" "Did you ever...." She was taking stock of me.