“I did a bit of rummaging,” the old man explained. “You can see that there has been a chapel there. I probed about with my little spud, and found an old tile or two; see here. These are from the tile-works beyond Stanchester, brought down the river by barge and then packed across to this place. Fourteenth-century Stanchester tiles.”
He pulled up from the floor of the car some parts of broken, reddish tiles, each with a bit of some simple yellow design in the middle, a rose, a lily, a cross or a crown.
“I washed them in the spring,” he explained. “In an out-of-the-way place like this, the site didn’t get pillaged like most of them.”
“They would have had the priory to pillage, so much nearer the road,” Frampton said.
“Well, I’ve had a happy day, routing about,” his father said. “Now we’ll get along to Stubbington, and then home to tea.”
He did not speak for the next few miles; then said quietly:
“I suppose Rolly Marcham will have the job of doing it up?”
“I haven’t got it yet,” his son answered.
The old man laughed. “He says he hasn’t got it yet, Margaret,” he repeated. “If you hadn’t determined to get it, you would not have stayed there all this time. Besides, I knew you wouldn’t resist the water.”
“What do you know about the water?” Frampton said. “You never saw it.”
“It’s all marked on the map,” the old man said. “As I get older, I have to read maps instead of going to places. It’s a lovely valley, I suppose. Margaret says there are curlews.”
“All sorts of birds,” he said.
“I suppose it might be a bit rheumaticky, with all this water,” the father said.
“Oh no,” he answered. “Water will run wherever you lead it. You could carry all the water away, easily enough. As soon as she saw it, I knew that Peggy’s heart was saying what George the Third said to the dumpling?”
“What did he say?” the old man asked.
“‘That’s the jockey for me,’” his son said, “or so the history books tell me.”
“I did say something of the sort, perhaps,” Margaret said, “but as a practical housekeeper, I did a little wonder about stores, the post and the plumber.”
“And a doctor for the old father-in-law,” the old man said.
“As for stores,” Frampton said, “there are cars and vans and lorries. The post will come twice a day, and will carry mails away, if asked. As for plumbing, I have a man, Joe, who can do any sort of plumbing, right on the premises. As for a doctor, you’ll be so well you won’t need a doctor here.”
They talked thus for a few minutes, till they were in the Market Square of Stubbington; outside the severe brick Tudor gate-house of Stubbington Abbey. There on a brass plate was the name of PIGGOTT.
“I dare say, I won’t be long,” he said, as he left the car.
“Fram never yet was long in making up his mind or doing what he had decided,” his old father said. “He would make a good dictator.”
In a few minutes, Frampton came out again, climbed into the car and drove them away.
“Have you plunged, Fram?” his father asked.
“I think I’ve got it,” he said. “Nobody else is after it. I’m just going to telephone from the post office, to get my law chaps on to it.”
He stopped the car at the post office, and telephoned to London, giving his instructions, that the firm was to get busy about it.
“Sorry to keep you,” he said, “but I’ve set things going now, from both ends, so let us talk of the improvements.”
This was a pleasant occupation to them till they reached the old man’s old, beautiful house not far from Newbury. They were staying there for the next two nights.
Margaret came down before the others, to find tea ready, and the curtains drawn. She looked at the family portraits on the wall; there were but two, of Frampton’s grandparents, both by the famous painter, John Naunton. The grandmother had been painted from life, in old age; the grandfather from three old photographs. The old man came into the room and found her looking at them.
“Looking at the ancestors?” he asked. “Well, those are the only ancestors we have; but no man could ask for better. They were good souls, my dear. Thank God, I was able to look after them when they were old; not that Father was ever old. But we aren’t exactly from the top drawer, my dear; just the ordinary.”
“You needn’t tell me that you and Frampton are ordinary,” she said.
“Not when we are getting at our particular things,” he said. “No, we’re both clever in our ways, Fram and I; but apart from those times we’re fairly usual, and had better not presume. We’re ordinary folk. I don’t mind. I don’t even mind the people who do mind; formerly I did.”
“And you think that the man who discovered Cornine is ordinary, do you?” she said. “You’ll make me talk like a bolshie, if you say things like that.”