The Post Girl

ISBN-13: 9781517246815 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 208 str.

Edward C. Booth

Opis

When summer comes Mrs. Gatheredge talks of repapering her parlor, and Ginger gets him ready to sleep in the scullery at a night's notice, but the letting of lodgings is not a staple industry in this quarter of Yorkshire, and folks would fare ill on it who knew nothing of the art of keeping a pig or growing their own potatoes in the bit of garden at the back. Visitors pass through, indeed, in large enough numbers between seed- and harvest-time (mostly by bicycle), staring their way round the village from house to house. But all that ever develops is an occasional request for a cup of water-in the hope, no doubt, that we may give them milk-or an interrogation as to the road to somewhere else. Steg's reply to the latter, through a long succession of summers, has waxed into a set formula, which he prepares with all the exactness of a prescription: "There 's two rawds roads] tiv it," he says, measuring out his words carefully against the light of inward understanding, like tincture in a chemist's vial. "A right un an' a wrong un. 'Appen ye 'd as lief gan right un. Wrong un 's a long way round."