(3/20) Storm in the Village Read Free

magnificent steak and kidney pudding, which simmered gently on her stove from two o'clock onwards, for her lodger's, and her own, supper together at eight o'clock. It filled the little house with its homely fragrance, and Dr Martin, who called in hopefully about half-past three for a cup of tea with his old friend and patient, noticed it at once.
    'That's the stuff!' he said approvingly, rubbing his hands, and he cast a glance at Miss Clare's spare frame. 'You're putting on weight since that girl came. Good idea of yours to have a lodger!'
    It had not been Miss Clare's idea at all, as they both knew very well, but Miss Clare let it pass. It was Dr Martin who had engineered Miss Jackson's removal from her headmistress's house to Miss Clare's; and he could see that young company as well as an addition to her slender housekeeping purse was doing his patient all the good in the world.
    'Have a ginger nut,' said Miss Clare, pushing the massive biscuit barrel across to him.
    'I'll have to dip it. My new bottom set's giving me hell!' said the doctor, with disarming frankness. 'We're getting old, Dolly, that's our trouble.'
    They smiled across at each other, and sipped their tea in comfortable silence. The steak and kidney pudding sizzled deliriously on the stove. The fire warmed their thin legs, and though indeed, thought Miss Clare, we're both old and white-haired, at least we're very happy.
    Mrs Pringle was busy washing out the school tea cloths at her own sink. This was done every day, but on this occasion Mrs Pringle was particularly engrossed, for it was the first time that she had used what she termed one of these new-fangled deterrents.'
    A staunch upholder of yellow bar soap, Mrs Pringle had set her face against the dazzling array of washing powders which brightened the grocer's shop. On a wooden shelf, above her sink, were stacked long bars, as hard as wood, which she had stored there for many months. This soap was used for all cleaning purposes in the Pringle household. The brick floors, the stout undergarments and Mrs Pringle's dour countenance itself were all scoured with this substance, and when one piece had worn away, Mrs Pringle fetched her shovel, laid a bar on a piece of newspaper on the kitchen floor and sliced off another chunk to do its work.
    But the gay coupons, all assuring her of their monetary value, which fluttered through Mrs Pringle's letter-box from time to time, gradually found a chink in her armour. The day came when, slightly truculent, she handed one across the counter, and put the dazzling packet in her basket. She was careful to cover it with other packages, in case she met neighbours who, knowing her former scorn of these products, would be only too pleased to 'take a rise out of her' if they saw that she had finally fallen.
    And so, on this day, Mrs Pringle washed her tea cloths with a critical eye. The packet had been tucked away behind the innocent bars of soap, for Mrs Pringle had no doubt that her husband and grown-up son could be as equally offensive as her neighbours about this experiment, if they caught sight of the soap powder.
    'Hm!' said Mrs Pringle grudgingly, as she folded the wet tea towels, and put them into her laundry basket. 'It don't do so bad after all!'
    With some pride, she trudged up the garden and began to peg out the cloths on the line. When she had done this, she propped the line up with a sturdy forked hazel branch, and surveyed the fluttering collection.
    'Might be something to be said for these deterrents, after all!' she told herself, returning to the cottage, 'and it do save chipping up the soap—that I will give 'em!' It was, indeed, high praise.

    Miss Jackson, in the infants' room at Fairacre was embarking on the most elaborate and artistic frieze yet attempted by her class. It was to go all round the room, fixed with drawing pins to the green-painted matchboarding, and it was to represent Spring.
    The children were busy snipping with their blunt-nosed little