Village Centenary Read Free Page B

Spring Festival.'
    'Thank you. Yes, please, I should love to come,' I said.
    He said goodbye tor the second time and we set about the stove with guilty speed. Mrs Pringle's name had not been mentioned by anyone in the classroom, but we all knew what lent energy to our efforts.

    That evening my old friend Amy rang me. We first met at college, many years ago, and the friendship has survived separation, a war, Amy's marriage and the considerable differences in our views and temperaments.
    Amy is all the things I should like to be - elegant, charming, good-looking, intelligent, rich and much travelled. I can truthfully say that! do not envy her married state, for 1 am perfectly content with my single one, and in any case James, although a witty and attractive man, is hopelessly susceptible and seems to fall in love at the drop of a hat, which Amy must find tiresome, to say the least of it.
    'Come and have some supper,' I invited when she proposed to visit me one evening in the near future.
    'Love to, but I must warn you that I'm slimming.'
    'Not
again!
' I exclaimed.
    'That would have been better left unsaid.'
    'Sorry! But honestly, Amy, you are as thin as a rail now. Why bother?'
    'My scales which, like the camera, never lie, tell me that I have put on three-quarters of a stone since November.'
    'I can't believe it.'
    'It's true though. So don't offer me all those lovely things on toast that you usually do. Bread is
out.
'
    'What else?'
    'Oh, the usual, you know. Starch, sugar, fat, alcohol, and the rest.'
    'Is there anything left?'
    Amy giggled.
    'Well, lettuce is a real treat, and occasionally a
small
orange, and I can have eggs and fish and lean meat, in moderation.'
    'The whole thing sounds too damn moderate for me. What would you say to pork chops, roast potatoes and cauliflower with white sauce, followed by chocolate mousse and cream?'
    'Don't be disgusting!' said Amy. 'I'm drooling already, but a nice slice of Ryvita and half an apple would be just the thing.'
    'I'll join you in the pauper's repast,' I promised nobly, and rang off.

2 February
    I remembered my promise to Miss Clare and brought her over to tea on the first of the month.
    A gentle thaw had set in and the snow had almost vanished. It tended to turn foggy at night and the roads were still filthy, with little rivulets running at the sides, but it was good to have milder weather during the daytime, and a great relief to let the children run in the playground at break. Under the garden hedge a few brave snowdrops showed. I had picked a bunch for the tea table, the purity of the white flowers contrasting with the dark mottled leaves of the ivy with which 1 had encircled them.
    1 was glad that 1 was not slimming like poor Amy, as we munched our way through anchovy toast and sponge cake. After school I am always ravenous, and how people can bear to go without afternoon tea, and all the delightful ingredients which make it so pleasant, I do not understand.
    When we had cleared away, we set out on the first after-tea walk of the year. A few early celandines showed their shield-shaped leaves on the banks at the side of the lane, and it was wonderful to see the green grass again after weeks of depressing whiteness.
    A lark sang bravely above, and blackbirds and thrushes fluttered among the bare hedges, scattering the pollen from the hazel catkins that nodded in the light breeze. In the paddock near Mr Roberts's farmhouse, sixty or seventy

    ewes, heavily in lamb, grazed ponderously upon the newly disclosed grass. There was a wonderful feeling of new life in the air despite the naked trees, the bare ploughed fields and the miry lane we walked.
    'I know most people dislike the month of February,' said Miss Clare, as we returned, 'but I always welcome it. With the shortest day well behind us, and the first whiff of spring about, I begin to feel hopeful again.'
    'Your mother was quite right,' I told her. 'Everyone should have an after-tea walk on February the first. It's