The Literary Sense

"I mustn't seem too clever," she said to herself; "I must just be interested in what he cares about. That's true politeness: mother always said so."

So she talked of the price of herrings and the price of onions, and of trade, and of the difficulty of finding customers who had at once appreciation and a free hand.

When he drew up in some lean grey village, or at the repellent gates of some isolated slate-roofed house, he gave her the reins to hold, while he, with his samples of fruit and fish laid out on basket lids, wooed custom at the doors.

She experienced a strangely crescent interest in his sales.

Between the sales they talked. She found it quite easy, having swept back and penned in the major part of her knowledges and interests, to leave a residuum that was quite enough to meet his needs.

As the chill dusk fell in cloudy folds over the giant hill shoulders and the cart turned towards home, she shivered.

"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously. "The wind strikes keen down between these beastly hills."

"Beastly?" she repeated. "Don't you think they're beautiful?"

"Yes," he said, "of course I see they're beautiful – for other folks, but not for me. What I like is lanes an' elm trees and farm buildings with red tiles and red walls round fruit gardens – and cherry orchards and thorough good rich medders up for hay, and lilac bushes and bits o' flowers in the gardens, same what I was used to at home."

She thrilled to the homely picture.

"Why, that's what I like too!" she said. "These great hills – I don't see how they can feel like home to anyone. There's a bit of an orchard – one end of it is just a red barn wall – and there are hedges round, and it's all soft warm green lights and shadows – and thrushes sing like mad. That's home!"

He looked at her.

"Yes," he said slowly, "that's home."

"And then," she went on, "the lanes with the high green hedges, dog-roses and brambles and may bushes and traveller's joy – and the grey wooden hurdles, and the gates with yellow lichen on them, and the white roads and the light in the farm windows as you come home from work – and the fire – and the smell of apples from the loft."

"Yes," he said, "that's it – I'm a Kentish man myself. You've got a lot o' words to talk with."

When he put her down at the edge of the town she went to rejoin her nurse feeling that to one human being, at least, she had that day been the voice of the home-ideal, and of all things sweet and fair. And, of course, this pleased her very much.

Next morning she woke with the vague but sure sense of something pleasant to come. She remembered almost instantly. She had met a man on whom it was pleasant to smile, and whom her smiles and her talk pleased. And she thought, – quite honestly, – that she was being very philanthropic and lightening a dull life.

She wrote a long loving letter to John, did a little shopping, and walked out along a road. It was the road by which he had told her that he would go the next day. He overtook her and pulled up with a glad face, that showed her the worth of her smiles and almost repaid it.

"I was wondering if I'd see you," he said; "was you tired yesterday? It's a fine day to-day."

"Isn't it glorious!" she returned, blinking at the pale clear sun.

"It makes everything look a heap prettier, doesn't it? Even this country that looks like as if it had had all the colour washed out of it in strong soda and suds."

"Yes," she said. And then he spoke of yesterday's trade – he had done well; and of the round he had to go to-day. But he did not offer her a lift.

"Won't you give me a drive to-day?" she asked suddenly. "I enjoyed it so much."

"Will you?" he cried, his face lighting up as he moved to arrange the sacks. "I didn't like to offer. I thought you'd think I was takin' too much on myself. Come up – reach me your hand. Right oh!"

The cart clattered away.

"I was thinking ever since yesterday when I see you how is it you can think o' so many words all at once. It's just as if you was seeing it all – the way you talked about the red barns and the grey gates and all such."

"I do see it," she said, "inside my mind, you know. I can see it all as plainly as I see these great cruel hills."

"Yes," said he, "that's just what they are – they're cruel. And the fields and woods is kind – like folks you're friends with."

She was charmed with the phrase. She talked to him, coaxing him to make new phrases. It was like teaching a child to walk.

He told her about his home. It was a farm in Kent – "red brick with the glorydyjohn rose growin' all up over the front door – so that they never opened it."

"The paint had stuck it fast," said he, "it was quite a job to get it open to get father's coffin out. I scraped the paint off then, and oiled the hinges, because I knew mother wouldn't last long. And she didn't neither."

Then he told her how there had been no money to carry on the fruit-growing, and how his sister had married a greengrocer at Buxton, and when everything went wrong he had come to lend a hand with their business.

"And now I takes the rounds," said he; "it's more to my mind nor mimming in the shop and being perlite to ladies."

"You're very polite to me," she said.

"Oh, yes," he said, "but you're not a lady – leastways, I'm sure you are in your 'art – but you ain't a regular tip-topper, are you, now?"

"Well, no," she said, "perhaps not that."

It piqued her that he should not have seen that she was a lady – and yet it pleased her too. It was a tribute to her power of adapting herself to her environment.

The cart rattled gaily on – he talked with more and more confidence; she with a more and more pleased consciousness of her perfect tact. As they went a beautiful idea came to her. She would do the thing thoroughly – why not? The episode might as well be complete.

"I wish you'd let me help you to sell the things," she said. "I should like it."

"Wouldn't you be above it?" he asked.

"Not a bit," she answered gaily. "Only I must learn the prices of things. Tell me. How much are the herrings?"

He told her – and at the first village she successfully sold seven herrings, five haddocks, three score of potatoes, and so many separate pounds of apples that she lost count.

He was lavish of his praises.

"You might have been brought up to it from a girl," he said, and she wondered how old he thought she was then.

She yawned no more over dull novels now – Buxton no longer bored her. She had suddenly discovered a new life – a new stage on which to play a part, her own ability in mastering which filled her with the pleasure of a clever child, or a dog who has learned a new trick. Of course, it was not a new trick; it was the old one.

It was impossible not to go out with the greengrocer every day. What else was there to do? How else could she exercise her most perfectly developed talent – that of smiling on people till they loved her? We all like to do that which we can do best. And she never felt so contented as when she was exercising this incontestable talent of hers. She did not know the talent for what it was. She called it "being nice to people."

So every day saw her, with roses freshening in her cheeks, driving over the moors in the wheeled tea-tray. And now she sold regularly. One day he said —

"What a wife you'd make for a business chap!" But even that didn't warn her, because she happened to be thinking of Jack – and she thought how good a wife she meant to be to him. He was a "business chap" too.

"What are you really – by trade, I mean?" he said on another occasion.

"Nothing in particular. What did you think I was?" she said.