Lud-In-The-Mist

by Hope Mirrlees

Once there, he had no difficulty in finding Mistress Ivy’s little shop, and she herself was sitting behind the counter. She was a comely, apple-cheeked woman of middle age, who looked as if she would be more in her element among cows and meadows than in a stony little shop, redolent of the various necessities and luxuries of a village community. She seemed of a cheerful, chatty disposition, and Master Nathaniel punctuated his various purchases with quips and cranks and friendly questions. By the time she had weighed him out two ounces of snuff and done them up into a neat little paper poke she had told him that her maiden name had been Gibberty, and that her husband had been a ship’s captain, and she had lived till his death in the seaport town. By the time she had provided him with a quarter of lollipops, he knew that she much preferred a country life to trade. And by the time a woollen muffler had been admired, purchased and done up in a parcel, she had informed him that she would have liked to have settled in the neighbourhood of her old home, but – there were reasons.