Well , Im not exactly sure, said the ironmonger, gazing out into the glaring street through a doorway festooned with tin mugs and gridirons, but I think it was the gentleman as played the kettle-drum that rode him. His eyes seemed to follow some half-remembered pageant, though outwardly they rested on the languid salutations of the saddlers dog and the hotel collie on the opposite pavement.
Miss OFlannigan, who looked and was too hot for conversation, remained impassive where she sat, on the top of an Empress cottage stove, with her gaze fixed on the zinc pails that hung like Chinese lanterns from the ceiling.
Unfortunately we shall not take a kettle-drum, I replied, hesitatingly.
Well, no, of course, admitted the ironmonger; but I assure you that a pony thats bin in the yeomanry band wont be partikler as to traction-engines or sech. You ladies could play any instrument when ridin im.
Miss OFlannigan laughed sardonically from the Empress stove, and Mr Griffiths attitude of mild bewilderment changed to wounded dignity.
Perhaps Mr Williams, the chemist, could oblige you with sech animals as you require, he said, with the stiffness of one of his own swing-door hinges; but there isnt sech a cob in Welshpool as what my cob is.
We temporised with Mr Griffiths and proceeded to the chemists, noticing as we did so a determination of the inhabitants of Welshpool to their shop doors, while the loafers round the stone pedestal of the gas lamp that seems to form the focus of Welshpool life, turned to look after us like sunflowers to the sun. Further away than ever went the memory of the thud of bus-horses feet on wood pavement, the hot glitter of harness and livery buttons at Hyde Park Corner, the precarious dive across Piccadilly, and all the other environments of yesterday. The heat of noon lay here like a spell on the street, and Welshpool, for the most part, sat in its shady back parlours in comfortable lethargy.
Like the other shops, Mr Williams, the chemists, was cool and empty, with the air of a place where it is always dinner-hour hanging drowsily over it. Indeed, the pimpled cheek of the apprenticewhy are pimples the common wear of chemists assistants?was still inflated by a mouthful when he made his appearance, and a sound as of dumpling impeded the voice in which he told us that Mr Williams had a pony, and that the mistress would speak to us herself.
Mr Williams was away, explained Mrs Williams, drawing teeth and measuring for new ones; and yknow what a job that is, she concluded, examining Miss OFlannigans smile with the eye of a connoisseur. Miss OFlannigan relapsed somewhat abruptly into gloom.
She sat on the top of an Empress cottage stove.
The obliging ironmonger.
I have a pair of real little beauties, went on the chemists wife, beaming at us between minarets of Enos Fruit Salt and Mellins Food, just the thing for London work. Ill have them round at the hotel for you in ten minutes.
We were conscious of social shrinkage as the work for which we required the ponies was explained; a fortnights road work in Wales, with the proviso that the animals would have to carry packslarge packs, added Miss OFlanniganheld a suggestion of bagmen, not to say tinkers. But Mrs Williams stable sank unhesitatingly to the level of our needs. She had yet another pony, three years old, thirteen hands high, steady, and bin ridden with the Yeomanry, she ended, reassuringly.
From the eye that Miss OFlannigan cast upon me I knew that her mind was, like mine, occupied with a vision of the Yeomanry mounted, like cyclists, on dwarf-safeties, and we ventured to ask whether the St Bernard, whose eyes gleamed from the dark corner of the shop where he lay, pantingly protruding a tongue like a giant slice of ham, had been ridden during the training. The jest had a high success, and a suetty giggle from somewhere near the open door of the parlour apprised us that this gem of Irish humour was not lost on the apprentice.
Before we returned to the hotel several things had been accomplished. We were possessors of the chemists pony for a fortnight; we had bakingly retraced our steps to the ironmonger, and by dint of remaining immutable on the top of the cottage stove, had made a like bargain with him; and we had interested Welshpool more whole-souledly than any event since the election and the last circus. Coolness and peace awaited us at the Royal Oak Inn, with its thick walls and polished floors, and its associations of the old coaching days, wonderfully striking to an Irish eye, accustomed to connect antiquity with dirt and dilapidation. We have nothing hale and honourable like these hostelries, with their centuries of landlord ancestry: we have the modern hotel after its kind, and also the unspeakable pothouse, with creeping things after their kind; but antiquity, if such there be, is a poor, musty ghost, lingering among broken furniture and potsherds, to sadden the eyes of such as can discern it.
Ireland seemed a long way off, while we lunched largely and languidly on fruit and cream, and wondered how we were going to ride through four counties in heat of this kind. A sense of inadequacy grew upon us like a slight indigestion, or, perhaps, it came to us in that guise, and the fussy clatter of ponies hoofs in the yard below had a ring in it of the inexorable. Miss OFlannigan sharpened a pencil and began to make notes, evidently to restore her moral tone,notes about Welshpool, she said, antiquities, and such things; but as subsequently these proved to consist of the entry, Saturday, June 10, Black and White, lunch, Academy, headache, tea, tried on, &c., with a bulbous profile of the ironmonger, her method of working back to ancient history must have been mystic and gradual.
While we thus sat dubious of ourselves and all things, expecting to hear that the chemist and the ironmonger had alike thought better of it, there was a shuffling of many feet in the hall, and the door opened to its widest to admit an immense old lady, advancing with the solemnity of a hearse, while two daughters of some fifty-five or sixty hard-won years moved beside her like pall-bearers, supporting each a weighty elbow on their lean arms. A third daughter walked behind, carrying a white dog of the Spitz breed. As a foundation-stone sinks to its resting-place, so, and with a like deliberation, was the old lady lowered into the largest and, indeed, the only possible chair; one daughter shut the window, another rang the bell, and a meal of fried beef-steak, onions, and bottled stout was ordered. The temperature of the room seemed perceptibly to rise, and Miss OFlannigan and I communed by glances as to whether we had energy to get up and go away.
Eh! its warm, vera warm, said the old lady, addressing the company in general, but ceaselessly examining Miss OFlannigan and me with eyes as blue and bright as those of any heroine of inexpensive fiction; it maks a body pspire vera free, that it dew. But ye dew enjoy it
