He went on without hesitation as if he knew the showground as well as Moss or Mossdyche valley. As they stood aside a moment at the marquee opening for a convoy of people to pass out he told her that they couldn’t see everything, but he’d show her what was what. He’d been round already, first thing. Flo was content. His quiet, partly husky voice took hold of her. He walked with quick short steps, slipping through the crowd in a curious lithe way, so that she had difficulty in keeping up. Sometimes half a dozen persons separated them, but his light uncovered upstanding hair was a good guide, and whenever he got ahead he waited patiently, Their first stop was at a big stall set out with carnations in tiers. Flo exclaimed at the many different colours, the frilling, the velvety sheen of the darker blooms. Jack pointed to a very dark wine, but she didn’t like that as much as a beautiful salmon pink with an orange glow in its depths. He took a tattered red-backed notebook out of his side pocket and pencilled the name down.
“All right, I’ll try ’em both,” he said.
“Where?” asked Flo.
“In one of the greenhouses,” he answered, matter of fact. “It won’t be tomatoes all the time,” and he smiled, his blue eyes meeting her’s intimately so that for a moment it seemed to her that there was no one else in the marquee. “How about roses next?” he suggested after the shortest pause.
Then he was showing her the table decorations. She chose the table with flesh pink sweet-peas and long emerald ropes of smilax.
“Get away,” he said, “that’s all love and honey. That kind of thing’s bin seen since the year dot,” and he took her to a table done all with catmint, rose-pink, blue and mauve, with a few old-fashioned clove pinks for contrast. “Don’t say you like it if you don’t.”
“It’s . . . it’s very nice.”
“But you’d rather have the other?”
“It . . . it’s cold, somehow.”
“But it’s new,” he laughed. “It got first, anyway.”
Next without saying where they were going he led her into a second large marquee set out with scores of card tables covered with paper cloths designed to imitate Belfast damask.
“Half a crown a time,” he explained briefly. “It’s a tiring job, show-lookin’. No sense in doing without. An’ if we leave it later we’ll never get in.”
As it was they had a job to find a table to themselves. There was no choice of food, the same for everybody—sliced ham and tongue and green salad with hot new potatoes and pats of butter. Flo had never had this mixture before, but found it good and filling. After that came Victorian plums and custard, and finally coffee and cheese. Jack talked nearly all the time . . . about carnations, about roses.
“If I grow owt I want ta grow it good,” he said thoughtfully.
Then he switched to noticing the people; trying to guess what they all were.
“It’s just a day out for most of ’em. They don’t know a ewe from a goat, but they enjoy themselves.”
Flo was aware that she was enjoying herself also. Jack’s slow, but nearly continuous, talk left her completely at ease. And yet it was interesting talk. She realized that he was really thinking aloud; she was seeing the show and the people not only herself but through his eyes as well. And he knew so much more about country things and country folk that she was content to listen and learn.
“I’d like ta bet that he’s from Ashbourne way,” nodding to a spare man in stained whipcord breeches and noticeable new black leggings. “Sheep man . . . used ta working with his hands in his cross-pockets an’ a stick under his arm. Dogs do th’ work on a sheep farm.”
Jack was known to many of the people who kept coming in and mooching round for tables. It was always, “Hello, Jack, how’s things?” Never his surname. He answered them all the same with ready ease.
“Won’t they wonder who I am?” Flo asked, self-conscious.
“Oh, I’m usually with someone fresh . . . it won’t worry ’em,” he answered lightly, and she was sorry that she had spoken.