He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages “for the ladies” at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all Christina’s rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says Ariadne must take care and not to be like “Miss Baxter (whoever she was) who refused a gent before he asked her.”
Christina thinks he is a bit attracted, and that it is a good thing for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takes the side of the woman—esprit de corpse, I think they call it. I myself think there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love with Simon. I even threatened her with this exposé, and she turned round on me, and said I should be a liar, for she wasn’t in love with Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that!
Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons.
At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and Ariadne answered demurely that it was getting a nice pea-green, or a good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse than ever.
Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we had to make a rule that we wouldn’t allow gentlemen in the church during decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men’s button-holes instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn’t care for so many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and she reely could not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from him! We were only decorating for three days.
During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day’s ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his church just as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their own, in either case.
Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then.
At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne’s untidiness is trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as book-markers, and butter—well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne’s cakes, when made, will form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of breaking the nastiest fall.
Christina’s cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him for giving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status was preserved.
On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of them said, “Ay, Sir, but aren’t we men the buttresses a-leaning up against it and propping it up like?” Peter was only shocked.