"Oh yes. It is a two-pub village," Desterro said, as one quoting a calibre. "Besides, it has everything a village in England should have. Queen Elizabeth slept there, and Charles the Second hid there; and Crusaders are buried in the church-there is one just like the manager of our ranch in Brazil-and all the cottages are obtainable on postcards at the shop; and it appears in books, the village does-"
"Guide books, you mean?"
"No, no. It has an author who specialised in it, you understand. I read one of his books when I came first to Leys. Rain Over The Sky it was called. All breasts and incest. And it has the Bidlington Martyrs-that is six men who threw stones at the police station last century some time and got put in jail. Imagine a country that remembers a thing like that! In my country they use knives-when they can't afford revolvers-and we smother the corpses with flowers, and cry a lot, and forget all about it next week."
"Well-"
"We can have some coffee at The Teapot."
"A little Hibernian, surely?"
But that was too much for even an intelligent stranger to these shores. "It is real coffee, I may tell you. It both smells and tastes. Oh, come on, Miss Pym. It is a small fifteen minutes away, and it is not yet ten o'clock. And there is nothing to do in this place until we are summoned to eat beans at one o'clock."
"Are you not taking any of the examinations?" Lucy asked, passing meekly through the gate that was held open for her.
"Anatomy I shall take, I think. Just, as you say, for the hell of it. I have taken all the lectures, so it will be fun to find out how much I know. It is worth knowing anatomy. It is a great labour, of course; it is a subject in which imagination is not appreciated, but it is worth learning."
"I suppose so. One wouldn't feel a fool in an emergency."