THE PESSIMIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 30

THE PESSIMIST

By Merry Anne An afternoon visitor is something rare in these parts, especially at this time of the year, and the sight of a woman walking up the drive set the dogs barking wildly and tugging excitedly at their chains, and sent rny thoughts to the cake tins. Wei 1 , no one would expect an array of sponges with hens all on strike, and so, dropping my bundle of withered Michaelmas daisies and straightening my back, 1 stepped off the garden plot, and with my brightest hostess smile went to meet my caller, “ Goodness me! Oh. what a hill to live on ” she wailed “If I'd had any idea it was so steep I'd never have come. A rough road, too. just awful! ”

Anxious to stop the grumbling, I drew her attention to the view—surely no one could find fault with that Behind the rambling house and oldfashioned garden were huge sheltering pines, and below the old orchard the paddocks sloped away into a bushfilled valley beautifully green in the winter sunshine. Miles away, the farms on the Taieri Plains lay spread out like a map, and beyond were the dark hills, changeless, yet ever-chang-ing, according to the time of the day and the season of the year. “ Yes. it really is beautiful,” she agreed reluctantly, “ but it must be lonely. Everything is-so far away, and that distance all round every day would give me the blues!" We stepped on to the veranda, and 1 took her inside. A log fire was soon burning, and I fervently hoped that she’d catch something of its cheerfulness. With a cold, calculating eye she looked around the living room. “The house has been here for nearly 80 years, and is as sound as the day it was built,” I told her proudly, when she asked how old the place was. With eloquence worthy of an M.P. I related the history of tne house, one of the oldest in the province, and praised the brave pioneers who made this farm and this home.

“ Oh, all that might have been all right years a£o, but who wants to prop up their windows with sticks or pump water from a well nowadays, and as for cooking in a colonial oven—well I’d no idea ' {here were any left in New Zealand! Your sister, now, did well for herself, going to the university and marrying a solicitor. Well away from the farm atmosphere, and who’d blame her? I hear her husband’s built one of those new suntraps, and all the furnitui’e is glass, and all the work’s done by electricity. My word, brides nowadays have an easy time There’s my daughter-in-law, now. ‘You’ve made your bed, and you’ll have to lie on it.’ I said to Jack on his wedding day, and I still say the same. I was there the other day. a fine afternoon it was. and the two of them sitting on the veranda! ” (Her tone implied that the usual place on which to sit was the roof.) “ She had a few flowers in her lap and there she was, gesturing and posing, and Jack should have been out grubbing gorse. Well, the time went on, and no sign of her going to the kitchen, so I asked what she was cooking for tea. 'Oh. I haven’t thought about it yet; probably I’ll make some curried salmon.’ ‘ Here’s some cold spiced mutton, my own curing,’ I told her, ‘ and more like tea for a hungry farmer than a tin of flsh. And what pudding will you have?’ ‘Well, we don’t usually have pudding for tea, •but I could make one to-night.’ No pudding for their tea! Jack always had his steamed pudding for dinner and his good milk pudding for tea every day of his life. Well, she beat up an egg white and squeezed an orange over it —‘ Orange Fairy Fluff ’ she called the concoction!” my guest ended in disgust. After the substantial monotony of his mother’s meals Jack must welcome the frivolous diet, though perhaps Margot is unwise in choosing mid-winter to make the change-over. I made a cup of tea, and the children came in. “Three boys! Oh. dear me. You’ll have trouble enough when they grow up, That is, if they're spared. A pasty-faced wee thing the second one is; you’ll have a job to rear that one. Three boys—yes, you’ll have many a heart-ache, and then they’ll all marry and leave you. A daughter is a daughter all her life, but a son is a son till he takes him a wife,” she chanted dismally. “ I never can understand why people rave about home-made cakes,” she said as she helped herself to another eggless biscuit. “ I don’t bake anything now—just get a few pounds of rich fruit cake and a cream sponge when I go to town. But I don’t suppose you often get away from here." “ Oh, yes, we go to Dunedin occasionally and last month I went _ to Oamaru for a week-end —the jubilee celebrations, you know.” (I was beginning to feel a muchtravelled person.) “Well I never! I had no idea you’d ever been at High School. Oh, 20 years ago; well, I say! No one would recognise you, did they? ” “Acid drops ” we used to call the little round white sweets we bought when we were children, and I thought of them as she spoke. “Sad things, jubilees,” she went on “1 attended one of the church ones and every one of the. people I used to know was dead. Oh, well, I don’t suppose I’ll see any more jubilees. My heart’s not as good as it used to be No, thank you. no more tea. I always say ‘ One’s sufficient, two’s too many, and three’s not enough.’ Too much tea always makes me feel bad. Is that the right.time? 1 must go. The days are getting so short, it will soon

be dark. Come and kiss me ‘goodbye,’ ” she coaxed my young hopefuls, and from the eldest, no answer was the stern reply, but ‘ Pasty-face ' glared at her for a minute, then marched out of the room, turning at the door to say “Won’t tiss you. don’t like you.” (If his constitution appeared delicate to her, his manners certainly couldn’t.) Nothing daunted, however, she approached the youngest son of the house, and with an angelic smile on his sweet, chubby face, he reached up for a kiss, and gave her two for good measure. She should have been more than satisfied, but success evidently went to her head, and, greatly daring, she tackled him again. "Open your mouth and let me feel your toothie pegs.” Still smiling, he again obliged, then, showing commendable spirit for 18 months, he bit hard and she jumped She had certainly felt the toothie pegs. On the way to the gate I gathered her a few chrysanthemums, and that reminded her that hers had all been frosted.

“ But. gardening’s all very well for women who have nothing else to do. I’ll have to do extra work to-morrow. I supose, to make up for being away to-day. but I always say we should go out of our way to cheer othei’s up a bit.”

As I turned towards the house 1 felt that the evening had suddenly grown decidedly cold. The garden looked bare, a few shivering birds gave melancholy chirps from the gnarled

old fruit trees, the paddocks seemed wet and cold, and away in the distance the purple hills were bleak and desolate. When I came inside, a chill air seemed to envelop me. Perhaps we were in for a good white frost, or even snow. Probably the winter would be a rough one after all, and we’d all develop severe colds and be laid up with influenza or crippled with rheumatism. I heaped some scrub and light manuka sticks on the dying fire, and at once bright red flames leapt from the grate! filling dark comers with dancing shadows, and sending forth comforting warmth; and hope, ana gladness and cheer filled my soul, “If winter comes, can spring be far behind? ” I whispered to the golden marigolds in great-grandmother’s wil-low-pattern jug.