(11/20) Farther Afield Read Free Page A

that?'
    I saw her point.
    'The Flower Show's never been the same,' said Mrs Pringle, 'since that fellow that worked up the Atomic got on the committee. Good thing he's been posted elsewhere, but the trouble still remains. All this Jack's-as-good-as-his-master nonsense! Don't you remember the outcry when he wiped out the cottager classes? Said it was degrading to have two types of entry. As though we bothered! If you does your own digging and planting, you're a cottager. If you gets help, you're not. I never could see why that man was allowed to question the ways of the Almighty. "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate", says the hymn. And what's wrong with that, I'd like to know? If there'd been a cottagers' class, as there always used to be, then Mr Willet would have come first, and rightly so. He's drafting a fair knock-out of a letter to the Caxley.'
    I said I should look forward to reading it in next week's 'Caxley Chronicle'.
    'Oh, I don't say it will be in that early,' said Mrs Pringle, stacking our cups. 'So far it's only got as far as the first draft on a page of Alice Willet's laundry book. But he's keeping at it.'
    She replaced the lid of the biscuit tin.
    'Mrs Partridge's niece goes back to London today. I should think she and the vicar will be downright thankful. As far as I can hear, the girl's done nothing but wash her hair and walk about with one of those horrible transistors all day.'
    'She's supposed to be a very clever girl,' I said, rising to the absent one's defence.
    'Being clever don't get you far,' sniffed Mrs Pringle. 'There's some, not a hundred miles from here, who's passed examinations and that, but don't know no more than that cat what's in their cupboards.'
    Reminded of her duties, she rose and removed the tray from the kitchen table to the draining board.
    'You'd be least bother to me,' she told me, 'if you made yourself scarce while I tackle that china cupboard. I don't trust myself to keep a civil tongue in my head while that's being bottomed, and I've never been one to speak out of place, I hope.'
    She glanced at me sharply.
    'I suppose you wouldn't have such a thing as some good white paper for lining the shelves when I've washed them?'
    'As a matter of fact,' I told her with some pride, 'there's a roll of lining paper upstairs. I'll run up and get it.'
    It was pleasant to dazzle Mrs Pringle with my efficiency for once, and I rooted about in the landing cupboard among boxes of stationery, stored Christmas tree decorations, and a mound of yellowing cuttings from magazines which I tried to deceive myself into calling 'Reference Material' although, in my honest moments, I knew full well I should never refer to them.
    The roll of lining paper had managed to work its way to the very bottom of the cupboard, and right to the back behind a pile of box files dusty with age, and bearing such labels as 'Infant Handwork Ideas', 'Historical Costumes', and the like. I wouldn't mind betting that most teachers have just such a collection of junk tucked away, carefully garnered as an insurance against the future, and looked at only once in a blue moon, or else forgotten completely.
    The cupboard was a deep one and by the time I had wriggled the slippery roll from behind the boxes, I was hot and dusty and had laddered one stocking. I struggled to my feet feeling quite giddy with my exertions.
    I hoisted one of the dusty files under one arm. It contained, if I remembered rightly, some patterns for making simple lamp shades, and these might prove useful for handwork next term. I would go through the box at my leisure.
    Mrs Pringle's lining paper began to behave like a telescope, the inside sliding out at remarkable speed. From being eighteen inches in length, the roll rapidly became thirty, and caught itself in the banisters as I took the first unsteady step downwards.
    Everything happened at once. The heavy file slipped, the lining paper jammed, my ankle turned over with a crack, and the hall