Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. “Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.” “Ourn, at Keyneslade,” said Mrs. Fettley, “she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.” “This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.” “Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it....” Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. “Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!” The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday “shopping” ’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic. “You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,” Mrs. Ashcroft observed. “Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny--three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller--ain’t it?” “’Tis for Arthur--my Jane’s eldest.” “But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?” “No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.” “You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im--pore fool me!” “An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?” Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards. “He do. ’No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ’Take all an’ give naught--an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!” “They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,” Mrs. Ashcroft said. “An’ on’y last week,” the other went on, “me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’um to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.” “I lay he charged her, then.” “I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.” “Tck!” Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely. “They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,” Mrs. Ashcroft explained. “Ah,” said the other, with narrowed eyes. “I lay _he_ won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden?” “They must look arter theirselves--’same as we did.” Mrs. Ashcroft began to set out the tea. “No denyin’ _you_ could, Gracie,” said Mrs. Fettley. “What’s in your head now?”