THE POST-GIRL

CHAPTER I

When summer comes Mrs. Gatheredge talks ofrepapering her parlor, and Ginger gets him readyto sleep in the scullery at a night's notice, but the lettingof lodgings is not a staple industry in this quarter ofYorkshire, and folks would fare ill on it who knew nothing ofthe art of keeping a pig or growing their own potatoes inthe bit of garden at the back.

Visitors pass through, indeed, in large enough numbersbetween seed- and harvest-time (mostly by bicycle),staring their way round the village from house to house. Butall that ever develops is an occasional request for a cupof water—in the hope, no doubt, that we may give themmilk—or an interrogation as to the road to somewhereelse. Steg's reply to the latter, through a long successionof summers, has waxed into a set formula, which heprepares with all the exactness of a prescription:

"There 's two rawds [roads] tiv it," he says, measuringout his words carefully against the light of inwardunderstanding, like tincture in a chemist's vial. "A right unan' a wrong un. 'Appen ye 'd as lief gan right un. Wrongun 's a long way round."

These are mere migratory birds of visit, however—herethis morning and gone by noon—leaving little traceof their passage beyond a footmark on somebody's doorstepor a mustard-stained sandwich-paper blowing drearilyagainst the tombstones in the churchyard. Residentialvisitors are almost unknown to Ullbrig. One or two pettytradesmen bring their wives and families fromHunmouth for cheap sojourn during the summer months, butthey are more residential than visitors, recurring eachyear with the regularity of harvest, and blending asimperceptibly with Ullbrig life as the water with Jevons'milk. They have become to all intents and purposes apart of us, and are never spoken of as "visitors"—theyare merely said to be "wi' us again" or just "coom back." Theclass of visitor which is lacking to Ullbrig is thepleasure-seeking variety which comes for a month, ischarged unprotesting for lights and fire, never lends ahand to the washing of its own pots, and pays town pricefor country butter. Our local designation for suchguests—when we get them—is "spawers."

The word is apt to strike chill on urban understandingswhen heard for the first time. I remember when Gingersprang it upon me on the initial occasion of my hearingit, I was filled for a moment with an indefinable sense ofcalamity.

"Well," were Ginger's words, greeting me and leavingme almost in a breath. "Ah wish ah mud stay longer wi'ye noo, but ah mun't. We 've gotten spawers i' 'oose[house]."

I shook his earth-

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