Mockery Gap Read Free Page A

can’t help that,’ he said.
    ‘I have been told,’ said Miss Ogle, for the motion of the car always kept her talking, ‘that Mr. Pattimore sleeps far away from her in an attic——’
    Mr. Roddy looked up from his gloves.
    ‘Mr. Pink, you know is my agent, and he lives near to the sea, and that’s where we’re going,’ he said quietly.
    ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard about him‚’ Miss Ogle replied, laughing.
    Mr. Roddy held out his gloved hand and touched a tree that the car swayed nearly into as it passed a cart in the road. It was always like that during the drive: there were things that could be said, but when once the goal was reached and the green grass trod upon, or the castle stones, and the real business of the day commenced, the very simplest conversation was always out of reach and scandal was silenced.
    And now that the drive was over, even Miss Ogle felt the same difficulty as all the other members of the party about what should be said or done.
    But Miss Ogle was a resourceful lady, and so she dropped her walking-stick. Mr. Roddy picked it up, and Miss Ogle, in an offhand manner that no one but she would have dared to use upon such an important occasion, invited Mr. Roddy to climb a large tumulus that happened to be there, and to tell them how rocks were made.
    Although this setting of Mr. Roddy up above all the others was quite unseemly and utterly out of the order of the day at that point in the proceedings, yet Mr. Roddy climbed the mound, abstracting from his pocket as he did so a parcel of typed notes relating to the life-history of cliffs, valleys, hills, and rivers.Even extremely gifted people, who wear really expensive stockings, at least the gentlemen, and the ladies with their fine walking-shoes, must look at something besides gorse bushes and rabbit-holes. And our fine ones, each surrounded with a cloak of the grand manners, having eyes, watched. And what they saw was—and they all blamed Miss Ogle for bringing about a scene so discreditable to the common decencies practised by field societies—that Mr. James Tarr had begun to climb the tumulus at the same moment as Mr. Roddy, only from the other side. Mr. James Tarr was a gentleman of an argumentative temper, whose favourite remark was, ‘I wish to do it my own way.’ And his own way in this case was to spring in leaps up the mound, and to encounter, with his rugged and determined countenance looking more grim than usual, mild Mr. Roddy at the top of it.
    ‘You can’t both talk at once, you know,’ Miss Ogle most shamefully called out, ‘though you may want to.’
    Every one looked anywhere but at Miss Ogle.
    ‘Don’t you two begin to fight up there,’ she called louder than ever.
    It was most fortunate that Mr. Gollop was of the party.
    ‘Come,’ he said, leading Miss Ogle gently but firmly away by the arm, ‘do look at those birds in the bushes.’
    Every one now was relieved, and also most grateful to the Rev. Alfred Gollop for having saved their ears, at least at the moment, from any more of Miss Ogle.
    ‘Those birds aren’t larks,’ said Mr. Gollop, letting go the lady’s arm and going nearer to the gorse bushes so that he could see the birds more distinctly.
    ‘What are they, then?’ inquired the lady.
    ‘I think they’re sparrows,’ said Mr Gollop innocently, but the lady had turned to the mound again.
    And there Mr. Roddy—for Mr. James Tarr had descended again—was explaining in a mild and almost an apologetic voice, very different from His that made it, what the seemingly stupid affairs of nature were really all about.
    Pointing with his glove, he was saying when Miss Ogle returned from watching the sparrows, ‘To the westward, by Weyminster Bay, there the oolites live, which form a cushion; below these are potter’s and pile clay, firebricks, bituminous shales, sheep and cattle, potatoes and cider, and for the meadows the catch-water plan is used.’
    ‘And what kind of plan is that?’ asked Miss Ogle