and it chases the cod round all the time, so that they arrive in good condition. Mrs. Duff-Whalley is our cat-fish."
"I see. Has she children?"
"Three. A daughter, married in London—Mrs. Egerton-Thomson—a son at Cambridge, and a daughter, Muriel, at home. I think it must be very bad for the Duff-Whalleys living in such a vulgar, restless-looking house."
Pamela laughed. "Do you think all the little pepper-pot towers must have an effect on the soul? I doubt it, my dear."
"Still," said Jean, "I think more will be expected at the end from the people who have all their lives lived in and looked at lovely places. It always worries me, the thought of people who live in the dark places of big cities—children especially, growing up like 'plants in mines that never saw the sun.' It is so dreadful that sometimes I feel I must go and help."
"What could you do?"
"That's what common sense always asks. I could do nothing alone, but if all the decent people tried their hardest it would make a difference. … It's the thought of the cruelty in the world that makes me sick. It's the hardest thing for me to keep from being happy. Great-aunt Alison said I had a light nature. Even when I ought to be sad my heart jumps up in the most unreasonable way, and I am happy. But sometimes it feels as if we comfortable people are walking on a flowery meadow that is really a great quaking morass, and underneath there is black slime full of unimagined horrors. A paragraph in the newspaper makes a crack and you see down: women who take money for keeping little babies and allow them to die, men who torture: tales of horror and terror. The War made a tremendous crack. It seemed then as if we were all to be drawn into the slime, as if cruelty had got its fangs into the heart of the world. When you knelt to pray at nights you could only cry and cry. The courage of the men who grappled in the slime with the horrors was the one thing that kept one from despair. And the fact that they could laugh. You know about the dying man who told his nurse some joke and finished, 'This is the War for laughs.'"
Pamela nodded. "It hardly bears thinking of yet—the War and the fighters. Later on it will become the greatest of all sagas. But I want to hear about Priorsford people. That's a clean, cheerful subject. Who lives in the pretty house with the long ivy-covered front?"
"The Knowe it is called. The Jowetts live there—retired Anglo-Indians. Mr. Jowett is a funny, kind little man with a red face and rather a nautical air. He is so busy that often it is afternoon before he reads his morning's letters."
"What does he do?"
"I don't think he does anything much: taps the barometer, advises the gardener, fusses with fowls, potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks. It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time. They have no children. Mrs. Jowett is a dear. She collects servants as other people collect prints or old china or Sheffield plate. They are her hobby, and she has the most wonderful knack of managing them. Even now, when good servants seem to have become extinct, and people who need five or six are grubbing away miserably with one and a charwoman, she has four pearls with soft voices and gentle ways, experts at their job. She thinks about them all the time, and considers their comfort, and dresses them in pale grey with the daintiest spotted muslin aprons and mob caps. It is a pleasure to go to the Jowetts for a meal, everything is so perfect. The only drawback is if anyone makes the slightest mark on the cloth one of the silver-grey maids brings a saucer of water and wipes it off, and it is apt to make one nervous. I shall never forget going there to a children's party with David and Jock. Great-aunt Alison warned us most solemnly before we left home about marking the cloth, so we went rather tremblingly. There was a splendid tea in the dining-room with silver candlesticks and pink shades, and lovely china, and a glittering cloth, and heaps of good things to eat—grown-up things like sandwiches and rich cakes, such as we hardly ever saw. Jock was quite small and loved his food even more than he does now, dear lamb. A maid handed round the egg-shell china—if only they had given us mugs—and as she was putting down Jock's cup he turned round suddenly and his elbow simply shot it out of her hand, and sent it flying across the table. As it went it spattered everything with weak tea and then smashed itself against one of the candlesticks.
"I wished at that moment that the world would come to an end. There seemed no other way of clearing up the mess. I was so ashamed, and so sorry for my poor Jock, I couldn't lift my eyes, but Mr. Jowett rose to the occasion and earned my affection and unending gratitude. He pretended to find it a very funny episode, and made so many jokes about it that stiffness vanished from the party, and we all became riotously happy. And Mrs. Jowett, whose heart must have been wrung to see the beautiful table ruined at the outset, so mastered her emotion as to be able to smile and say no harm had been done. … You must go with me and see Mrs. Jowett, only don't tell her anything in the very least sad: she weeps at the slightest provocation."
"Tell me more," said Pamela—"tell me about all the people who live in those houses on the hill. It's like reading a nice Cranfordy book."
"But," Jean objected, "we're not in the least like people in a book. I often wonder why Priorsford is so unlike a story-book little town. We're not nearly interested enough in each other for one thing. We don't gossip to excess. Everyone goes his or her own way. In books people do things or are suspected of doing things, and are immediately cut by a feverishly interested neighbourhood. I can't imagine that happening in Priorsford. No one ever does anything very striking, but if they did I'm sure they wouldn't be ostracised. Nobody would care much, except perhaps Mrs. Hope, and she would only be amused."
"Mrs. Hope?"
"Have you noticed a whitewashed house standing among trees about half a mile down Tweed from the bridge? That is Hopetoun, and Mrs. Hope and her daughter live there."
"Nice?"
Jean nodded her head like a wise mandarin. "You must meet Mrs. Hope. To describe her is far beyond my powers."
"I see. Well, go on with the houses on the hill. Who lives in the one at the corner with the well-kept garden?"
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