The good soul was all this time trotting energetically along what I concluded could not be the lower road, since no chapel was in view. I just followed, wondering what would happen next! Meanwhile my companion talked, with scarcely comma-pause for breath.
“But I’m glad I happen to be late, or you might ha’ been wanderin’ around till you’re all mizzy-mazed. Soon as I saw you comin’ up ’long, I said to father—I was jes’ settlin’ ’im comfor’ble for th’ night—‘Father,’ I said, ‘here’s a lady a-lookin’ fur the chapel, sure ’nough. I shuden wonder a bit but what she’s come to speak at th’ meeting. Like as not she’s a friend of the minister, an’ ’pears she’s lost.’ I suppose you belong to London, ma’am?” This with a glance all over me to make sure there was no local hall-mark.
“My home is in London,” I replied, “but just at present I’m staying at Woodacres.”
“You’ve walked all the way from Woodacres?” she exclaimed.
“Yes; and I’m terribly hungry,” I said, hurriedly seizing my chance.
At this the kind hospitable soul was most concerned, and insisted on our turning into a relative’s house which we were passing at the moment. The door stood open, though the place seemed to be deserted.
“Myra,” she called out. A girl came downstairs with some pocket-handkerchiefs in her hand which she appeared to be marking in red. There was a hurried whisper in a back room, and quickly she brought in a glass of milk and some bread and butter—for which I was truly thankful.
“The lady do look wisht,” my companion explained to the girl. “She’s walked from Woodacres to hear the minister from London. She lost her way, and so didn’t get in time for the tea-meeting.”
I was interested in this item of information about myself, but decided to let the unexpected situation develop as it pleased.
We were soon walking along the road again, my companion talking the whole time. Myra was her niece, going to Bristol next week to start in a draper’s shop. “She says ’tisn’t stylish nowadays to let folks think as you does your washing yourself, so she’s making sort o’ red oughts and crosses in the corner, that the other girls ’ll think as the washin’ was put out. _Put out_, indeed!”—with utter scorn of voice—“‘Isn’t it all _put out_?’ I asks her. How could they dry ’un else? I’ve no patience with such fangels—_that_ I haven’t! And isn’t this war dreadful? I see in the paper I was a-readin’ to father that that Kayser do call it a righteous war. _A righteous war_—when he don’t even leave off a-fighting of a Sunday!”