HISTORY AND THE PARISH 171 



done nothing but talk about. They of all men and 

 women had perhaps jarred least upon the music of the 

 spheres. They had the right and power to live, and the 

 end was laughter. 



In all those years they had been separated but once. 

 Until four years ago she had not been out of Cornwall 

 except to bury her mother, who had suddenly died in 

 London. Two hundred pounds fell to her share on that 

 death and the money arrived one morning after the 

 harvest thanksgiving. For a week she continued to go 

 about her work in the old way save that she sent rather 

 hurriedly for a daughter who had just left her place as 

 cook in Exeter. At the end of the week, having stored 

 the apples and shown her daughter how to use the 

 separator, she walked in to Penzance in her best clothes 

 but without even a handbag; her husband was out with 

 his gun. By the next day she was at Liverpool. She sent 

 off a picture postcard, with a little note written by the 

 shopkeeper, saying that she would be back by Christmas, 

 and telling her husband to sell the old bull. Then she 

 sailed for New York. She saw Niagara; she visited her 

 nephew, John Davy, at Cincinnati; she spent two weeks 

 in railway travelling west and south, and saw the Indians. 

 Four days before Christmas she was back in the rickyard, 

 driving before her a young bull and carrying in her hand 

 a bunch of maize. 



" Well, Ann, you're back before your time," said her 

 husband, after praising the beast. 



" Yes, Samuel, and I feel as if I could whitewash the 

 dairy, that I do," said she. 



" Suppose you wait till to-morrow," proposed Sam 

 Davy. 



