Blanche Edith Baughan

“ But my very vittles is changed to me,” she went on plaintively, “an’ so ’ow do I know as the sea itself ’ud be the old sea to me now? Aye, dear me, ’tis all change, life is! Only the dead as doesn’t change—an’ the loonies, as grows to a bit o’ growth, an’ then stops, an’ never grows on. ”

“ Nye, doubtfully, “my Ted will ’ave it as there’s so much old at ’Ome, it keeps the new growth back. ‘Henglan’s full of old walls’, says he, ‘for to keep the pore man in, an’ old notions,’ ’e says, ‘for to keep ’im down. Gimme room,’ ’e says, ‘to rise, if so be there’s risin’ in me,’ says ’e’—an’ I aren’t denyin’ but what ’e ’ave got a better wage out ’ere, nor I don’t see no low-class lot about, neither, like them London ’op-pickers of ours, all rogues an’ rags. But I dunno! Maybe, as you get on in years, what you like best is what you know best. ”

“ You don’t see none such ’ere—seems as if the very ’ouses was ripe at ’Ome, don’t it?” she said regretfully, “an’ the air too—kind o’ sleepy an’ sunny-like, an’ a little bit thick an’ soft. Here, it alwus ’as a kind o’ thinness, to my taste, an’ the tang an’ tart o’ the sea’s got in it.”
“We ’ad a castle, an’ it were by the sea,” chanted Mrs. Stone, in her turn. “A round grey tower it ’ad got, with a gold bird upon it, fer to tell the wind, an’ it’s there as the swallers used fer to gether come the hautumn, fer to go hover the seas. ”

“ Nye with decision, as she put away the last of the breakfast things. “An’ now not another stroke o’ work do I lay hand to, until I get Ted’s tea to-night. Come then, beauty,” as a great sandy cat came sidling round her skirts, “here’s your saucer. Mice an’ milk, milk an’ mice, that’s about all you need to want, ain’t it, Buffy? You never come out aboard ship to live in a new country about as meller as a new potater, an’ with its months all hupside down; you don’t need to ’ave no hankerin’s. ”

“ I like to look up to my betters, I do, for my own self-respeck; betters as is betters, I mean; in course they ain’t alwus such—there’s some at ’Ome I could name,” she added reflectively. “An’ I must say I do like the way, out ’ere, the men ’ll let the women ’ave their share o’ the say without a-shuttin’ of ’em up an’ a-puttin’ of em’ down as if the Lord ’ad packed all the sense there is inside the men’s ’eads—which dear knows ’E ain’t! ”

“ Things does change to you so, an’ you do change so to things. There was a friend o’ mine, an’ she went back’ ’Ome after thretty year away, an’ they’d changed, an’ she’d changed, an’ there wasn’t one soul of ’em all as knew ’er, nor yet ’er a soul, excep’—who d’ye think? ”

“ Yet they carries it altogether too far, so they do. Why, only yestiday there was a man come round—a man, mind you!—a-wantin’ me to put my name down so as I could vote. Vote? Me? Lor’ bless the man! I ain’t no sufferingette, an’ so I hups an’ tells ’im. ’Ow fractious they been gettin’ at ’Ome again, ain’t they, them sufferingettes?”
“Which kind o’ jet’s that, dear?” asked Mrs. Stone. “I got a brooch real Whitby.”
“No, no! What! ain’t you never ’eard tell o’ the sufferingettes—them women as wants to go an’ vote in Parlymint, same as the men?” explained Mrs. Nye. ”

“ I been to see the nicest little old lady, Ted, that like your great-aunt at Minster! an’ comes from ’Ome an’ all, too, down Walmer way. Only think, it took me two hours to get to ’er to-day, while I could a-reached Walmer in an hour from Canterbury, couldn’t I? ”

“ Nye. “For then you could a seen the holdest church in Hengland, St. Martin’s, with its roses round it—an’ the Cathederal, all grey, with Bell Harry Tower in the middle a-builded up into the blue—an’ the rooks in the elm-trees in the Close—an’ the city walls—an’ the Westgate, as the Pilgrims useter come through on their knees, ’underds o’ years ago, an’——”
“Ho, but we ’ad a castle near hus,” interrupted Mrs. Stone with pride. “Which that was ’underds o’ years old, too. An’ as fer the halms-’ouses, I’ve heered tell as they was more’n three ’underd. ”