At First She Was Amazed At Our Decision,
Then She Was Delighted And Said She Would Go Out To Her
Neighbours And Try To Borrow All That Was Wanted In The Way Of
Furniture And Bedding.
Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to
buy bread, bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr.
Marling for vegetables.
Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly
taking up a spade and other implements led us out to his
garden and dug us a mess of potatoes while we waited. In the
meantime good Mrs. Flowerdew had not been idle, and we formed
the idea that her neighbours must have been her debtors for
unnumbered little kindnesses, so eager did they now appear to
do her a good turn. Out of one cottage a woman was seen
coming burdened with a big roll of bedding; from others
children issued bearing cane chairs, basin and ewer, and so
on, and when we next looked into our room we found it swept
and scrubbed, mats on the floor, and quite comfortably
furnished.
After our meal in the small parlour, which had been given up
to us, the family having migrated into the kitchen, we sat for
an hour by the open window looking out on the dim forest and
saw the moon rise - a great golden globe above the trees - and
listened to the reeling of the nightjars. So many were the
birds, reeling on all sides, at various distances, that the
evening air seemed full of their sounds, far and near, like
many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown on reeds, rising
and falling, overlapping and mingling.
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