“You silly old sod, have a drink,” shouted Clem, dumping the bass on its end and snatching the near rein smartly. The horse tossed its head and jingled, but turned. Clem slipped the bit and drew the animal’s head towards a deep stone trough. It was set in the garden wall, and was a-bubble from a continuous fall gushing from a rustied iron pipe which stuck out of the stonework a foot above the trough rim. The horse held its jowl over the water for a moment, then made to turn away, but Clem shouted, “Whoa! Sup while you’ve got chance.” The horse kept still again with its lower lip just above the brimming surface. Clem began unhooking and the horse stood there stupid and sulky, as if he didn’t even know what water was for. At last everything was undone and Clem took the weight of the shafts and shouted, “Get on then, you old sinner,” and the horse woke up and clattered eagerly away. It was not till then that Clem seemed to notice Flo still waiting.
“Door’s yonder, can’t you see it?” he asked in much the same tone as he had used to the horse, the intimateness which had made her like him quite gone.
Flo grasped her bass by the rope and struggled up the short flagged path. The door was dull red and was partly open. She rested the bass and hesitantly knocked. Instantly an irritated voice yelled: “Come in. Dunna stand knocking.”
Flo pushed the door and looked up a flagged passage ending at a second door outlined by light penetrating at its cracks.
“In ’ere,” the voice ordered from the left, and Flo saw a large kitchen with a very small, round, snub-nosed woman standing facing her from a rag rug in front of a big shining range. “I’m Mrs. Nadin; Peppr’y Monica they call me, them as dunna like pepper.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Flo, taken aback.
“There doesna seem ta be much pepper abaat thee, any road,” Mrs. Nadin commented, turning to stir with a wooden spoon in a two-gallon iron pan, causing to rise strongly a not unpleasant smell of warm soaked bran and potato peelings. Flo, still holding the bass, stood not knowing what to do.
“Eh, dunna stond theer; shape thysen. Tha hasna come ’ere ta be waited on,” exclaimed Mrs. Nadin, abruptly turning back again. “Tha’s gotten fine togs. Aa hopes tha’s non feart o’ work, cos’ if tha art tha’ll non stay ’ere long. There’s enough silly gawps awready.”
She bustled to a great stone sink beneath the window that looked into the yard and held a neatly black-leaded kettle under a big brass tap. Flo looked round, wondering what to do. She walked to a chair at the end of a long horse-hair upholstered settee and balanced the bass on it.
“Tha’s brought plenty o’ truck,” she heard the sharp comment behind her. “When I were a lass we had one frock for best an’ another to work, an’ nowt else, devil’s wedding or no. Tek your coat off, an’ if yo’ dunna know where ta put it, sit on it. I wonder where that long-legged strip o’ idleness is?”
She bustled out on to the flags and shouted harshly and penetratingly, “Emmott!” Without waiting she bustled back and the second she saw Flo again broke out into her sharp, truculent sentences.
“What did you say your name was?” Flo parted her lips, only there was no pause into which she could put even so small a reply as that. “If yo’ want ta stay, I’ll give yo’ a bit of advice,” went on Mrs. Nadin, apparently without taking breath. “Work hard, keep your mouth shut and your bowels open, an’ you’ll be all right.”
Flo reddened.
“Sit down,” came the next staccato order, “sitting’s cheap. We winna grumble if yo’ wear them through, on’y happen it’ll be your backside as’ll wear first.”
Mrs. Nadin never grinned at her own pleasantries. The chairs were solid with flat seats. Once they had been red stained. This showed between the spokes of the straight backs and on the insides of the legs, but elsewhere they were bare wood. Everything in the kitchen was solid and plain and worn, but the flag floor, uncovered except in front of the fire, was washed to the buff of the stone; the grate black shone, and its silver rails and bevelled edges were as bright as if new. A broad four-rail bamboo rack was hoisted close to the high ceiling, and three sheets that hung there were a delicious white, neatly folded and ironed. Flo was about to sit when Mrs. Nadin noticed her hat.
“Happen tha’s feart we shall pinch it,” she said. “But tha’ll get tired carryin’ it round on your yead, I reckon.”
Flo looked hurriedly round and saw seven hooks on a board fastened along the wall to the left of the door. Most of the hooks held bulky loads of old coats topped with shabby hats, but the end one from the door was empty. She took her costume jacket off and hung that there too.
“You’ll have our Dot as jealous as a bald flea,” said Mrs. Nadin. “Where the hell is that long length o’ pump-water?”