Free Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis by Miss Read Page B

heads. They 'adn't seen nothing like it, you see. Nor me, for that matter.
    'There I was, and I couldn't make up me mind to stop in the cart or try and plod on home and risk it.'
    'What did you do?' asked Dolly.
    'Risked it,' said the old man laconically. 'Risked it, and fell in a dam' ditch I never knew was there, and 'ad to stop there two days. I ain't seen nothing like that blizzard before or since. If it 'adn't a been for the two horses getting back I reckon I'd a been there still. They never got home till next day, and it took four chaps searching in turn to find me, it was that cruel.'
    'Did you shout?' asked Dolly.
    'I was past shouting after the first 'alf-hour,' answered Mr Davis, holding the kettle to the light and squinting inside it. 'By the time they dug me out I was as stiff as this 'ere iron. Stayed in bed a week, I did, and 'ad to 'ave three fingers and two toes plucked orf. The frost-bite, you see.'
    Dolly nodded, appalled.
    'I shan't forget 1881 in a 'urry,' said the old man, and thrust the soldering iron back into the red heart of the coals with a deft thrust of his maimed hand.
    ***
    The Davises were not the only new friends. Francis and Mary Clare blossomed in their country surroundings, and the neighbourliness which they had missed so sorely in Caxley now seemed doubly dear.

    The family had for so long been thrust in upon itself. The next door neighbours at Caxley, cross and aged, had been ever present in Mary's thoughts, and Dolly and Ada were often scolded for making a noise that might penetrate the thin dividing wall. Fear of strangers, and particularly of 'the marsh lot', kept country-bred Mary from making many friends in Caxley. Francis's illness and their pinching poverty were other factors in 'keeping themselves to themselves'.
    Back in the country again, fellows of a small community, Mary and Francis felt their tension relax. A move is always an excitement in a village, and by the end of the first long day the family had met more than a dozen neighbours, some prompted by kindness, some by curiosity, who had called to welcome them.
    Within a few weeks Francis had the cottage garden dug and planted, and found he had already promised to exhibit something in the local autumn flower show which was to be held at Fairacre. Mary, to her surprise, found that she had been persuaded to join the Glee Club, run on Friday nights by the redoubtable Mr Finch in his schoolroom.
    'Us makes our own fun,' Mrs Davis said to Mary. ''Tis all very fine for the gentry to go to Caxley in their carriages for a ball at the Corn Exchange, but us ordinary folk, as goes on Shanks's pony, gets our fun in the village.'
    And Mary, with her two little girls safely at school all day, and a husband back at work, was only too ready to join in the simple homely fun of which she had been starved for so long.
    Dolly and Ada took to the village school like ducks to water. They had been well drilled at Caxley and found that the work here was well within their grasp. Their classmates were somewhat impressed by the two new girls who had experienced the superior instruction of a town school, and Dolly and Ada felt pleasantly distinguished.

    The smaller numbers made school life much less frightening for timid Dolly, and gave Ada greater scope for her powers of leadership. In no time she was the acknowledged queen of the playground, and had all the younger children vying for her favours, and the thrill of 'playing with Ada'. Mr Finch, who hid a genuine fondness for children beneath his pompous veneer, was glad to have such a bright pupil among his scholars, and Mrs Finch, who had some difficulty with discipline, was relieved to find that Dolly was as sedate as she was hardworking.
    But the greatest joy for Dolly in this happy new life was the discovery of the infinite beauties in the natural world about her. That first glimpse of Beech Green and the realisation that she had found her real home, was repeated daily in a hundred different ways.