Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 18

By seven o'clock Nicky-Nan had measured and cut his boards to size.

He fitted them loosely to floor the bedroom cupboard. Later on he would fix them securely in place with screws. But by this time daylight was dusking in, and more urgent business called him.

Returning to the parlour downstairs, he refilled his pockets with the gold of which he had lightened himself for his carpentry, knotted another twenty sovereigns tightly in his handkerchief, picked up the lighter of his two spades--for some months he had eschewed the heavier--and took his way through the streets, up the cliff-track by the warren, and so past the coastguard watch-house.

The sun had dropped behind the hill, leaving the West one haze of gold: but southward and seaward this gold grew fainter and fainter, paling into an afterglow of the most delicate blue-amber. In the scarce-canny light, as he rounded the corner of the cliff, he perceived two small figures standing above the hollow which ran down funnel-wise containing his patch, and recognised them.

"Drat them children!" he muttered; but kept on his way, and, drawing near, demanded to know what business brought them so far from home at such an hour.

"I might ask you the same question," retorted 'Beida. "Funny time,-- isn't it?--to start diggin' potatoes? An' before now I've always notice you use a visgy for the job. Yet you can't be _plantin_--not at this season--"

"I find the light spade handier to carry," explained Nicky-Nan in some haste. "But you haven't answered my question."

"Well, if you _must_ know, I'm kissin' goodnight to 'Bert here.

They've started him upon coast-watchin', and he's given this beat till ten-thirty, from the watch-house half-way to the Cove.

I shouldn' wonder if he broke his neck."

"No fear," put in 'Bert, proudly exhibiting and flashing a cheap electric torch. "They gave me this at St Martin's--and in less than an hour the moon'll be up."

"But the paper says there be so many spies about--eh, Mr Nanjivell?"

"Damme," groaned Nicky-Nan, "I should think there were! Well, if there's military work afoot, at this rate, I'd better clear.

--Unless 'Bert would like me to stay here an' chat with 'en for company."

"We ben't allowed to talk--not when on duty," declared young 'Bert stoutly.

"Then kiss your brother, Missy, an' we'll trundle-ways home."

CHAPTER XIII.

FIRST AID.

"I hope, Mary-Martha," said Miss Oliver, pausing half-way up the hill and panting, "that, whatever happens, you will take a proper stand."

"You are short of breath. You should take more exercise." Mrs Polsue eyed her severely. "When an unmarried woman gets to your time of life, she's apt to think that everything can be got over with Fruit Salts and an occasional dose of Somebody's Emulsion.

Whereas it can't. I take a mile walk up the valley and back every day of my life."

"I don't believe you could perspire if you tried, Mary-Martha."

"Well, and _you_ needn't make a merit of it, . . . and if you ask _me_," pursued Mrs Polsue, "one half of your palpitation is put on.

You're nervous what show you'll make in the drawing-room, and that's why you're dilly-dallyin' with your questions and stoppages."

"Mrs Steele and me not being on visiting terms--" Miss Oliver started to explain pathetically. "Yes, I know it was my _duty_ to call when they first came: but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it--Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can't prevent it.

But it only shows a ruck in your left stocking."

Mrs Polsue turned about in the road. "You were hoping, you said, that I'd be taking a proper stand? If that woman comes any airs over me--"

She walked on without finishing the sentence. "She's every bit as much afraid as I am," said Miss Oliver to herself, as she panted to catch up; "the difference being that I want to put it off and she's dying to get it over." Aloud she remarked, "Well, and that's all I was saying. As like as not they'll be trying to come it over us; and if we leave it to Hambly--"

"_Him?_" Mrs Polsue sniffed. "You leave it to me!"

The Vicar welcomed them in the porch, and his pleasantly courteous smile, which took their friendliness for granted, disarmed Mrs Polsue for a moment. "It took the starch out of you straight: I couldn't help noticin'," was Miss Oliver's comment, later in the day.

"It took me by surprise," Mrs Polsue corrected her: "--a man has no business to stand grimacing in his own doorway like a--a--"

"Butler," suggested Miss Oliver, "--like a figure in a weather-house. What do _you_ know about butlers? . . . but"--after a pause--"I daresay you're right, there. I've heard it put about that her father used to keep one; and quite likely, now you mention it, she stuck her husband in the doorway to hide the come-down."

"The pot-plants were lovely," Miss Oliver sighed; "they made me feel for the moment like Eve in the Garden of Eden." "Then I'm thankful you didn't behave like it. _I_ was stiff enough by time we reached the drawing-room."

"Stiff" indeed but faintly describes Mrs Polsue's demeanour in the drawing-room; where, within a few minutes, were gathered Mrs Pamphlett, Mr Hambly, Dr Mant (who had obligingly motored over from St Martin's), five or six farm wives, with a husband or two (notably Farmer Best of Tresunger, an immense man who, apparently mistaking the occasion for a wedding, had indued a pair of white cotton gloves, which he declined to remove, ignoring his wife's nudges). Four or five timid "women-workers," with our two ladies and the host and hostess, completed the gathering.

Mrs Steele opened the business amid an oppressive silence, against which all the Vicar's easy chat had contended in vain.

"I hope," she began nervously, "that at such a time none of you will object to my using the word I want to use, and calling you 'friends'?

. . . My friends, then--It was at my husband's suggestion that I invited you to meet this afternoon--because, you know, _somebody_ must make a beginning."

"Hear, hear," put in Dr Mant encouragingly. Mrs Steele's voice grew a little firmer. "We thought, too, that the Vicarage might be the most convenient place on the whole. It is a sharp walk up the hill for those of you who live in Polpier itself: but our stables being empty, the farmers, who come from farther and just now at greater sacrifice, escape a jolting drive down into the village and back."

"Hear, hear," repeated Dr Mant. He was thinking of the tyres of his car. But this time he overdid it, and fetched up Mrs Polsue as by a galvanic shock.

"If interruptions are to be the order of the day," said Mrs Polsue, "I'd like to enter my protest at once. I don't hold, for my part, with calling public meetings--for I suppose this _is_ a public meeting?" she asked, breaking off, with a challenging eye on the Vicar.

"By no means," he answered with quick good-humour. "It's a meeting by invitation, though--as my wife was about to explain--the invitations were meant to include _friends_ of all creeds and parties."

"It's for a public purpose, anyhow?"

"Certainly."

"Then I may be saying what doesn't meet with your approval, or Mrs Steele's, or the company's: but that's just my point. I don't hold with meetings for public business being called in a private house.

Because if things are done that you don't approve of, either you sit mum-chance out o' politeness, or else you speak your mind and offend your host and hostess."

Mr Hambly was about to interpose, but the Vicar checked him with a quick movement of his hand.

"Mrs Polsue's is a real point; and, if she will allow me to say so, she has put it very well. Indeed, I was going to propose, later on, that we hold our future meetings in a place to be agreed on. This is just a preliminary talk; and when a dozen people meet to discuss, it's handier as a rule to have some one in the chair. . . .

You agree? . . . Then for form's sake, I propose that we elect a chairman."

"And I propose Mrs Steele," added Mr Hambly.

"Seconded," said Farmer Best. "d.a.m.n it!"

"William!" his spouse e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. (She knew that he detested Mrs Polsue, whom he had once described in private as "the p'isenest 'ooman that ever licked verdigris off a farthing.")

"'Tis all right, Chrisjana," he responded in a m.u.f.fled voice, with head abased as nearly between his calves as a protuberant stomach allowed. "But one o' the castors o' this here chair has given way.

. . . Beggin' your pardon, ma'am,"--he raised a face half-apoplectic but cheerful, and turned it upon his hostess--"but I totalled up seventeen score when last weighed. There's no damage done that can't be set right with a screw-driver afore I go." Then, with another turn-about that embraced the company, "Proposed an' seconded that Mrs Steele do take the chair. Those in favour say 'Hi!'--the contrary 'No.' . . . The Hi's 'ave it." (Farmer Best was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Guardians, and knew how to conduct public business.)

Mrs Steele resumed her little speech. A pink spot showed upon either cheek, but she spoke bravely.