Kate Hardy

by D.E. Stevenson

She may be young and entertain hordes of ‘bright young things’ who will rush madly about the village in noisy cars.

Richard had spent the war in an administrative post, he had been swept into it willy-nilly at the beginning, but although he had to live in Bath to be near his work he was able to get home for week-ends. The Haygarths were over-age for war service so they had kept the Manor open. It had worked out well.

Richard preferred not to think about his wife. He had discovered that if one really made up one’s mind firmly enough one could stop thinking about a subject which gave one pain.

“The trouble with so many people nowadays is that they aren’t real, they don’t think for themselves. They accept a label from somebody else and wear it. In the old days each person was himself, an individual with an immortal soul. When you think about it seriously that is a belief which gives a man the right to feel important. It gives him a sense of his own value; and a man who values himself will never accept a label from somebody else and wear it.”

You know as well as I do if you take coffee at this hour you’ll never sleep.

book-larnin’ an’ such spiles the memory. It’s cinemas an’ books an’ such-like trash children be ’avin’ now. Us didden ’ave no school,” declared Abijah proudly.

It was a strange thought, interesting but oddly frightening; a chain of stories stretching back into the dim and shadowy past. Stories about the people who had lived here, in this very place, whose feet had trodden upon this very earth . . . and all true.

Kate toyed with the idea of a “little book” about Old Quinings (her publishers would be pleased, she knew, for her name would be sufficient to sell it, and “little books” were fashionable at the moment), a “little book” illustrated with woodcuts which would reveal the inner soul of an English village to people who were so unfortunate as to live in towns.

Like John Moore!!

“It’s a pity when people get too big for their boots. Don’t you agree, Miss Hardy?” “They can always get new boots,” suggested Kate with a thoughtful air.

Of course I see the charm of it, you know. In fact, I think the country is definitely the best place to live—for older people like you.”

Of course it’s true that the moment they begin to take a real interest in their work, the moment that you can really begin to educate them, they leave school. It’s heartbreaking sometimes.”

Richard was too civilised, he was slightly effete, there was too little of the cave-man about him.