Thereby Hangs a Tale. Volume One

“Do you?” said Tiny, for he looked seriously at her as he spoke.

“What about?” said Fin, coming to her sister’s help.

“About the quantity of water,” said Mr Mervyn. “You know we’ve a big copper for the soup; and Mrs Dykes has an idea in her head that eight quarts of water go to the gallon, mine being that there are only four.”

“Why, of course,” laughed Fin.

“So,” said Mr Mervyn, “she says I have the soup too strong, while I say she wants to make it too weak.”

“And what does old Mrs Trelyan say?”

“Say?” laughed Mr Mervyn. “Oh, the poor old soul lets me take it to her as a favour, and says she eats it to oblige me.”

“It’s so funny with the poor people about,” said Fin; “they want things, but they won’t take them as if you were being charitable to them; they all try to make it seem like a favour they are doing you.”

“Well, I don’t know that I object to that much,” said Mr Mervyn.

“They’re all pleased enough to see us,” continued Fin; “but when Aunt Matty and papa go they preach at them, and the poor people don’t like it.”

“Fin!” said Tiny, in a warning voice.

“I don’t care,” said Fin; “it’s only Mr Mervyn, and we may speak to him. I say, Mr Mervyn, did you hear about old Mrs Poltrene and Aunt Matty?”

“Fin!” whispered Tiny, colouring.

“I will tell Mr Mervyn; it isn’t any harm,” cried downright Fin.

And her sister, seeing that she only made matters worse, remained silent.

“Mr Mervyn, you know old Mrs Poltrene, of course?”

“Oh yes, the old fisherman’s wife down by the cliff.”

“Yes; and Aunt Matty went to see her, and talked to her in her way, and it made the old lady so cross that – that – oh, I mustn’t tell you.”

“Nonsense, child, go on.”

“She – she told Aunt Matty to go along and get married,” tittered Fin, “and she could stay at home and mend her husband’s stockings, and leave people alone; and Aunt Matty thought it so horrible that she came home and went to bed.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Mr Mervyn. “Mrs Poltrene has a temper; but here we are – you’ll come in?”

Tiny was for drawing back, but her sister prevailed. They had been walking along the lane, and had now reached a long, low cottage, built after the fashion of the district, with massive blocks of granite, and roofed with slabs of the same. There was a strip of garden, though gardens were almost needless, banked up as the place was on all sides with the luxuriant wild growth of the valley. On one side, though, of the doorway was the simple old fuchsia of bygone days, with a stem here as thick as a man’s wrist – a perfect fuchsia tree, in fact; and on the other side, leafing and flowering right over the roof, a gigantic hydrangea, the flower we see in eastern England in pots, but here of a delicious blue.

“Any one at home,” said Mr Mervyn, walking straight in. “Here, Mrs Trelyan, I’ve brought you two visitors,” and a very old, white-haired woman, who was making a pilchard net, held her hand over her forehead.

“Sit down, girls – sit down,” she said, in the melodious sing-song voice of the Cornish people. “I know them – they come and see me sometimes. Eh? How am I? But middling – but middling. It’s been a bad season for me. Oh, soup? Ah, you’ve brought me some more soup; you may empty it into that basin. I didn’t want it; but you may leave it. They’ve brought me up some hake and a few herrings, so I could have got on without. That last soup was too salt, master.”

“Was it?” said Mr Mervyn, giving a merry glance at Fin. “Well, never mind, I’ll speak to Mrs Dykes about it.”

“Ay, she’s an east-country woman. Those folks don’t know much about cooking. Well, young ladies, I hear you have been to London.”

“Yes, Mrs Trelyan.”

“And you’re glad to come back?”

“Yes, that we are,” said Fin.

“Ay, I’ve heard it’s a poor, lost sort of place, London,” said the old lady. “I never went, and I never would. My son William wanted to take me once in his boot; but I wouldn’t go. Your father was a wise man to buy Tolcarne; but it’ll never be such a place as Penreife.”

“You know young Trevor’s coming back?” said Mr Mervyn.

“Ay, I know,” said the old lady. “Martha Lloyd came up to tell me, as proud as a peacock, about her young master, talking about his fine this and fine that, till she nearly made me sick. I should get rid of her and her man if I was him.”

“What, Lloyd, the butler?” said Mr Mervyn, smiling.

“Yes,” said the old lady, grimly, “they’re Welsh people; so’s that young farm-bailiff of his.”

“You know the whole family?” said Mr Mervyn.

“Why, I was born here!” said the old lady, “and I ought to. We’ve been here for generations. Ah! and so the young squire’s coming back. Time he did; going gadding off into foreign countries all this time. Why, he’s six or seven and twenty now. Ay, how time goes,” continued the old lady, who was off now on her hobby. “Why, it was like yesterday that the Lloyds got Mrs Trevor to send for their sister from some place with a dreadful name; and she did, and I believe it was her death, when she might have had a good Cornish nurse; and the next thing we heard was that there was a son, and the very next week there was a grand funeral, and the poor squire was never the same man again. Ah! it was an artful trick that – sending for the nurse because Mrs Lloyd wanted her too; and young Humphrey Lloyd was born the same week. Ay, they were strange times. It seemed directly after that we had the news about the squire, who got reckless-like, always out in his yacht, a poor matchwood sort of a thing, not like our boots, and it was blown on the Longships one night, and there wasn’t even a body came ashore.”

“Rather a sad family history,” said Mr Mervyn.

“Ay, sad enough,” said the woman; “and now the young squire’s coming home at last from sea, but he’ll never be such a man as his father.”

“Think not?” said Mr Mervyn, musing.

“Sure not,” said the old woman. “Why, he was petted and spoiled by those Lloyds while he was a boy, and a pretty limb he was. Him and that young Lloyd was always in some mischief. Pretty pranks they played me. I’ve been out with the stick to ’em scores of times; but he was generous – I will say that – and many’s the conger and bass he’s brought me here, proud of ’em as could be, because he caught them himself.”

“Well, Mrs Trelyan, we must say good morning,” said Tiny, rising and taking the old lady’s hand. “Is there anything you would like – anything we can bring you?”

“No, child, no,” said the old lady; “I don’t want anything. If you’d any good tea, I’d use a pinch; but I’m not asking for it, mind that.”

“Where’s your snuff-box, granny?” said Mr Mervyn, bringing out a small canister from his pocket.

“Oh, it’s here,” said the old lady, fishing out and opening her box to show it was quite empty. “I don’t know that I want any, though.”

“Try that,” said Mr Mervyn, filling it full; and the old lady took a pinch. “That’s not bad, is it?”

“N-n-no, it’s not bad,” said the old lady, “but I’ve had better.”

“No doubt,” said Mr Mervyn, smiling.

“By the way, Mrs Trelyan, how old are you?”

“Ninety next month,” said the old lady; “and – dear, dear, what a bother visitors are. Here’s somebody else coming.”

For at that moment there was a firm step heard without, and some one stooped and entered the doorway, hardly seeing the group on his left in the gloomy room.