Page 69 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle

He thrust his fingers through his hair to rake it back from his brow, and smiled at her. ‘Shouldn’t fancy Old Fangs pulling something out o’ my jaw like that.’

The dentist in the village was a Mr Fanshawe, who was more generally called Fang-Sure, and referred to as Old Fangs.

‘But you have lovely teeth,’ Alice said. ‘I’ve often noticed.’

She had embarrassed him. His eyes slid away, and he reddened slightly. ‘They do the job, I s’pose.’ And then, recovering himself, though still not looking at her – he was busying himself rearranging the ropes and chains round the stump for dragging – he said, ‘Our dad always said you got to look after your teeth, cos you only get the one lot. “No teeth, no grub,” he used to say.’

‘Like horsemen say, “No hoof, no horse,”’ said Alice.

‘’S right. He made us all rub ’em with a bit o’ cloth every night, and swill round with salt-water. All right, walk on.’

Alice let Della go past her and dropped back so she could walk beside Axe and talk to him. Cobnut, whose panniers she had filled with the small branches and twigs, followed like a dog. ‘They’re getting on well with the house, too – Hundon’s, I mean. The roof’s back on and the windows are in. I saw when I came past today. Mr Gale was there and he said it’s just the inside walls to patch up and whitewash and it’ll be ready.’

‘I should think he’ll be glad to have it done,’ said Axe, ‘and have his house to himself again.’ The new cowman was lodging with the Gales until his house was ready.

‘I don’t think he minds. He gets a bit of extra money for putting him up. And Mrs Gale thinks the world of him. Ever such nice manners, she says. If he sees her lifting a bucket he comes and takes it from her.’

‘Spoiling her for her old man,’ Axe said, but with a twinkle to show he wasn’t serious. ‘Have you met him? This— What’s his name?’

‘The cowman? Woodrow. Well, I’ve seen him, and said hallo in passing, but not to say met him.’

With the departure of the Bunces, it was not just the land and the dilapidated buildings that had been taken over but Bunce’s twelve cows too. They were in mitigation of the unpaid rent that was owing, and certainly Mrs Bunce, her son and grandchild didn’t want them where they were going. That necessitated a new cowman. Richard had said that, since the intention was to start the milk scheme at Hundon’s, there was no point in just getting in a labourer to tide them over: they needed a proper high-skilled herdsman who could take the plan forward.

‘We want a modern, scientific kind of fellow, who’ll have new ideas,’ he said, ‘not some old chap who’ll want to do everything the way his great-grandfather did it.’

Adeane had scowled and growled at the idea that ‘the old ways weren’t good enough for young folk nowadays’, but Markham had agreed with Richard that they had better start as they meant to go on and get the right man in from the beginning. And so, through a mixture of enquiry, advertisement and good luck, they had come upon Michael Woodrow. He was thirty-five – too young for Adeane, but he had plenty of experience, having worked his way up from the age of fourteen to be second-in-command of Lord Denham’s herd at Long Ashington. On the way he had studied books and read journals and was itching to be his own master and put some of his ideas into practice.

Richard wanted him in place at once, and so, since the house at Hundon’s was barely fit to live in, he was being put up at the house of Gale, the estate carpenter, until it was ready. The house had proved worse, on inspection, than previously thought, and repair had become almost reconstruction.

‘That’s a big house, Hundon’s, for one man,’ Axe said. ‘He’ll rattle about in it, all on his own.’

‘His sister’s coming to live with him, as soon as it’s ready, to keep house for him. And I don’t suppose he’ll be all on his own for long, anyway. He’s very good-looking.’

‘Ah,’ said Axe. ‘And nice manners, too, so you said. He’ll cause a stir in the village, then.’

‘I think Richard’s new ideas will cause a stir all on their own,’ Alice said. ‘Oh, stop a minute, Della’s got hooked up on something.’

‘’S only a bramble. She’ll pull free.’

‘It’ll scratch her darling face. Let me untangle it. How are you getting on with Jules Verne?’ she asked as they resumed walking. She had brought him Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

‘Nearly finished,’ he admitted. ‘That’s an interesting tale. Makes you wonder what there might be down there. How deep is it, do you reckon?’

‘I asked Uncle Sebastian and he said a league is about three miles, so that’s sixty thousand miles. But he said the circumference of the earth is only about twenty-four thousand miles, so he thinks Jules Verne must have been exaggerating. It can’t really be twice as deep as the earth measures right round, can it?’

Axe smiled. ‘Asking the wrong person. But he’s got an imagination all right, that writer. Living under the sea!’

‘If you’ve nearly finished, I’d better bring another next time,’ Alice said. ‘You’re gobbling them up! Maybe one by Dickens – there’s loads in the library.’

‘You’re very kind, But you don’t have to do that for me,’ he said shyly.

‘It’s good for me,’ she said. ‘It means I have to read them too, so we can talk about them. And Giles always said I didn’t read enough. He was shocked when he first came home and found I didn’t read a book every day. He called me a little heathen.’

He smiled at her fondly, and it was her turn to feel shy. He noticed, and changed the subject. ‘Now, I’m wondering how in the world anyone would know how far the earth was right round the middle. Nobody’s got a bit of string that long.’

Alice laughed. ‘I’ve no idea. I’ll ask Uncle Sebastian. It’s something we ought to know, don’t you think?’

She didn’t notice she’d said ‘we’.