“Guest, we don’t know what to call you: is there any indiscretion in asking you your name?”
“Well,” said I, “I have some doubts about it myself; so suppose you call me Guest, which is a family name, you know, and add William to it if you please.”
Dick nodded kindly to me; but a shade of anxiousness passed over the weaver’s face, and he said—“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but would you tell me where you come from? I am curious about such things for good reasons, literary reasons.”
Dick was clearly kicking him underneath the table; but he was not much abashed, and awaited my answer somewhat eagerly. As for me, I was just going to blurt out “Hammersmith,” when I bethought me what an entanglement of cross purposes that would lead us into; so I took time to invent a lie with circumstance, guarded by a little truth, and said:
“You see, I have been such a long time away from Europe that things seem strange to me now; but I was born and bred on the edge of Epping Forest; Walthamstow and Woodford, to wit.”
“A pretty place, too,” broke in Dick; “a very jolly place, now that the trees have had time to grow again since the great clearing of houses in 1955.”
Quoth the irrepressible weaver: “Dear neighbour, since you knew the Forest some time ago, could you tell me what truth there is in the rumour that in the nineteenth century the trees were all pollards?”
This was catching me on my archæological natural-history side, and I fell into the trap without any thought of where and when I was; so I began on it, while one of the girls, the handsome one, who had been scattering little twigs of lavender and other sweet-smelling herbs about the floor, came near to listen, and stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder, in which she held some of the plant that I used to call balm: its strong sweet smell brought back to my mind my very early days in the kitchen-garden at Woodford, and the large blue plums which grew on the wall beyond the sweet-herb patch,—a connection of memories which all boys will see at once.
I started off: “When I was a boy, and for long after, except for a piece about Queen Elizabeth’s Lodge, and for the part about High Beech, the Forest was almost wholly made up of pollard hornbeams mixed with holly thickets. But when the Corporation of London took it over about twenty-five years ago, the topping and lopping, which was a part of the old commoners’ rights, came to an end, and the trees were let to grow. But I have not seen the place now for many years, except once, when we Leaguers went a pleasuring to High Beech. I was very much shocked then to see how it was built-over and altered; and the other day we heard that the philistines were going to landscape-garden it. But what you were saying about the building being stopped and the trees growing is only too good news;—only you know—”
At that point I suddenly remembered Dick’s date, and stopped short rather confused. The eager weaver didn’t notice my confusion, but said hastily, as if he were almost aware of his breach of good manners, “But, I say, how old are you?”