“Mossdyche,” said Jack, and guided Mike round the end of the pub where Flo saw a narrower lane which took them curving to a shallow guggling stream. By the bridge where the stream ran unfenced for a dozen yards three cows were drinking with a girl of eight or nine standing by. She had fresh cheeks, sun-gold hair, and an innocent look. Jack shouted: “Hi, you’re lettin’ ’em drink too much; you’ll have ’em bustin’. How’s Dick?”
“All right, thank you,” answered the child primly, smiling up.
“There’s not many people you don’t know,” said Flo.
“And not many as don’t know me,” he said, as if he liked it.
They turned off leftward up a still narrower lane, as rough and twisted as a torrent bed. Mike stepped as though he had corns, and Jack did not try to hurry him. They came to the lowest whisps of cloud flowing between the hollies and hawthorns with which the track was hedged; great white smudges that looked as though they would overwhelm Mike, the float and everything, but which passed with eerie silence and scarcely any perceptible thickening of the atmosphere; whiteness almost without body. Flo liked it. Between drifts she made out under the hill on the right a tall newish house which seemed out of place by the old sunk lane. Jack turned in between squared stone pillars. “Belle View”, Flo read, and smiled for there was no view, though it was easy to imagine the lake far below. They approached the house from the end. The gravel drive spread into an oval front and then past the house were sloping gardens with two shabby greenhouses at the side. House and garden were neat, but only perfunctorily so; there was no real sign of pride. Flo stayed in the float while Jack went round the back. After a while he walked up to the greenhouses with a medium-sized man with a very small head in a small cap and small feet in thin shoes, but with a stomach like a barrel. The pair chatted and went from house to house and chatted some more, inside and outside. The stout man made as if to walk away, then turned back. Jack went round the outside of both houses very carefully. He tested many of the panes with spread fingers; and much of the wood with a pocket-knife. The stout man took his cap off and scratched the top of his cranium which was bald and unexpectedly pale, as if it had never been uncovered for a year or more. Jack put both hands in his pockets and with his coat spread out looked nearly as fat as his opponent. The stout man spat on to a cabbage top. They went back into the lower house. When they came out the stout man very deliberately shut the door and led to the upper house. Ten minutes more were spent there before they came strolling towards the float. The stout man nodded at Flo, said it was a wet day, hoisted and spat, told Jack to be good, and then waddled off round the house back. Jack grinned and said: “Got ’em,” and started Mike round.
Jack was so obviously pleased that Flo felt glad, too.
“You brought me luck,” he said; and she thought of the green pig and the heart-stone and wondered whether he believed in that sort of thing. Instinctively she knew that the answer was “No.”
“Forty-seven quid the two. I’ll grow some tomatoes now, by gee, you wait.” He chuckled. “Ben didn’t want ta part, but it’s the road; folk winna come up for ’em.” And as they went down, Mike stepping even more warily, Flo learned that Jack had already got a stove and pipes enough, he reckoned, for these two houses as well as the house he had already bought.
“Ben’s like th’ rest. He says I conna grow ’em, neither. They say it’s too cold, an’ there’s non enough sun; an’ they say th’ soil’s not right.”
“I . . . I thought any soil was all right,” said Flo.
“Well, most soil’ll grow something but there’s some as is a lot better. And some soil’ll grow one thing, an’ another soil’ll grow somethin’ else. But thing as gets me is th’ way chaps round here just thinks as their ground winna grow anythin’ on’y grass, an’ yet they never tried it.”
“Is Mr. Nadin as bad?”
“No, he’s good . . . in his way. But he’s chiefly keen on cattle, and he’s old-fashioned. He never reads, and a man as doesn’t can’t keep up-to-date . . . unless, of course, he goes to special lectures an’ demonstrations. But he doesn’t.”
“Do you?”asked Flo.
“I never get chance. But I study up when I con, an’ I reckon I’ll be able ta grow tomatoes an’ lettuce an’ chrysanthemums an’, happen, a few other things.”
Flo laughed. “You’re always thinking about tomatoes. D’you dream about them?”
“I dunna,” said Jack, laughing also. “I’m too busy; when I go ta bed I sleep.”
“Suppose the soil round here’s good for something else, an’ not for tomatoes?”