She led us up to the door of the unfinished house, where a rather little woman was working with mallet and chisel on the wall near by. She seemed very intent on what she was doing, and did not turn round when we came up; but a taller woman, quite a girl she seemed, who was at work near by, had already knocked off, and was standing looking from Clara to Dick with delighted eyes. None of the others paid much heed to us.
The blue-clad girl laid her hand on the carver’s shoulder and said: “Now Philippa, if you gobble up your work like that, you will soon have none to do; and what will become of you then?”
The carver turned round hurriedly and showed us the face of a woman of forty (or so she seemed), and said rather pettishly, but in a sweet voice—
“Don’t talk nonsense, Kate, and don’t interrupt me if you can help it.” She stopped short when she saw us, then went on with the kind smile of welcome which never failed us. “Thank you for coming to see us, neighbours; but I am sure that you won’t think me unkind if I go on with my work, especially when I tell you that I was ill and unable to do anything all through April and May; and this open-air and the sun and the work together, and my feeling well again too, make a mere delight of every hour to me; and excuse me, I must go on.”
She fell to work accordingly on a carving in low relief of flowers and figures, but talked on amidst her mallet strokes: “You see, we all think this the prettiest place for a house up and down these reaches; and the site has been so long encumbered with an unworthy one, that we masons were determined to pay off fate and destiny for once, and build the prettiest house we could compass here—and so—and so—”
Here she lapsed into mere carving, but the tall foreman came up and said: “Yes, neighbours, that is it; so it is going to be all ashlar because we want to carve a kind of a wreath of flowers and figures all round it; and we have been much hindered by one thing or other—Philippa’s illness amongst others—and though we could have managed our wreath without her—”
“Could you, though?” grumbled the last-named from the face of the wall.
“Well, at any rate, she is our best carver, and it would not have been kind to begin the carving without her. So you see,” said he, looking at Dick and me, “we really couldn’t go haymaking, could we, neighbours? But you see, we are getting on so fast now with this splendid weather, that I think we may well spare a week or ten days at wheat-harvest; and won’t we go at that work then! Come down then to the acres that lie north and by west here at our backs and you shall see good harvesters, neighbours.
“Hurrah, for a good brag!” called a voice from the scaffold above us; “our foreman thinks that an easier job than putting one stone on another!”
There was a general laugh at this sally, in which the tall foreman joined; and with that we saw a lad bringing out a little table into the shadow of the stone-shed, which he set down there, and then going back, came out again with the inevitable big wickered flask and tall glasses, whereon the foreman led us up to due seats on blocks of stone, and said—
“Well, neighbours, drink to my brag coming true, or I shall think you don’t believe me! Up there!” said he, hailing the scaffold, “are you coming down for a glass?” Three of the workmen came running down the ladder as men with good “building legs” will do; but the others didn’t answer, except the joker (if he must so be called), who called out without turning round: “Excuse me, neighbours for not getting down. I must get on: my work is not superintending, like the gaffer’s yonder; but, you fellows, send us up a glass to drink the haymakers’ health.” Of course, Philippa would not turn away from her beloved work; but the other woman carver came; she turned out to be Philippa’s daughter, but was a tall strong girl, black-haired and gipsy-like of face and curiously solemn of manner. The rest gathered round us and clinked glasses, and the men on the scaffold turned about and drank to our healths; but the busy little woman by the door would have none of it all, but only shrugged her shoulders when her daughter came up to her and touched her.
So we shook hands and turned our backs on the Obstinate Refusers, went down the slope to our boat, and before we had gone many steps heard the full tune of tinkling trowels mingle with the humming of the bees and the singing of the larks above the little plain of Basildon.
XXVII
The Upper Waters
We set Walter ashore on the Berkshire side, amidst all the beauties of Streatley, and so went our ways into what once would have been the deeper country under the foothills of the White Horse; and though the contrast between half-cocknified and wholly unsophisticated country existed no longer, a feeling of exultation rose within me (as it used to do) at sight of the familiar and still unchanged hills of the Berkshire range.
We stopped at Wallingford for our midday meal; of course, all signs of squalor and poverty had disappeared from the streets of the ancient town, and many ugly houses had been taken down and many pretty new ones built, but I thought it curious, that the town still looked like the old
