"It's an old tune they used to play on the bells for a warning against water. I suppose the Bride of Enderby was drowned in a flood," he replied. He had not the faintest knowledge what it really was, but he would never have sunk so low as to confess that to his womenfolk. They listened and believed him. He believed himself.
"And the people knew what that tune meant?" said his mother.
"Yes--just like the Scotch when they heard 'The Flowers o' the Forest'--and when they used to ring the bells backward for alarm."
"How?" said Annie. "A bell sounds the same whether it's rung backwards or forwards."
"But," he said, "if you start with the deep bell and ring up to the high one--der--der--der--der--der--der--der--der!"
He ran up the scale. Everybody thought it clever. He thought so too. Then, waiting a minute, he continued the poem.
"Hm!" said Mrs. Morel curiously, when he finished. "But I wish everything that's written weren't so sad."
"I canna see what they want drownin' theirselves for," said Morel.
There was a pause. Annie got up to clear the table.
Miriam rose to help with the pots.
"Let ME help to wash up," she said.
"Certainly not," cried Annie. "You sit down again. There aren't many."
And Miriam, who could not be familiar and insist, sat down again to look at the book with Paul.
He was master of the party; his father was no good. And great tortures he suffered lest the tin box should be put out at Firsby instead of at Mablethorpe. And he wasn't equal to getting a carriage. His bold little mother did that.
"Here!" she cried to a man. "Here!"
Paul and Annie got behind the rest, convulsed with shamed laughter.
"How much will it be to drive to Brook Cottage?" said Mrs. Morel.
"Two shillings."
"Why, how far is it?"
"A good way."
"I don't believe it," she said.
But she scrambled in. There were eight crowded in one old seaside carriage.
"You see," said Mrs. Morel, "it's only threepence each, and if it were a tramcar--"
They drove along. Each cottage they came to, Mrs. Morel cried: "Is it this? Now, this is it!"
Everybody sat breathless. They drove past. There was a universal sigh.
"I'm thankful it wasn't that brute," said Mrs. Morel. "I WAS frightened." They drove on and on.