Mrs Caffyn's house was a roomy old cottage near the church, with a
bow-window in which were displayed bottles of 'suckers,' and of Day &
Martin's blacking, cotton stuffs, a bag of nuts and some mugs, cups
and saucers. Inside were salt butter, washing-blue, drapery,
treacle, starch, tea, tobacco and snuff, cheese, matches, bacon, and
a few drugs, such as black draught, magnesia, pills, sulphur, dill-
water, Dalby's Carminative, and steel-drops. There was also a small
stock of writing-paper, string and tin ware. A boy was behind the
counter. When Mrs Caffyn was out he always asked the customers who
desired any article, the sale of which was in any degree an art, to
call again when she returned. He went as far as those things which
were put up in packets, such as what were called 'grits' for making
gruel, and he was also authorised to venture on pennyworths of
liquorice and peppermints, but the sale of half-a-dozen yards of
cotton print was as much above him as the negotiation of a treaty of
peace would be to a messenger in the Foreign Office. In fact,
nobody, excepting children, went into the shop when Mrs Caffyn was
not to be seen there, and, if she had to go to Dorking or Letherhead
on business, she always chose the middle of the day, when the folk
were busy at their homes or in the fields. Poor woman! she was much
tried. Half the people who dealt with her were in her debt, but she
could not press them for her money. During winter-time they were
discharged by the score from their farms, but as they were not
sufficiently philosophic, or sufficiently considerate for their
fellows to hang or drown themselves, they were obliged to consume
food, and to wear clothes, for which they tried to pay by instalments
during spring, summer and autumn. Mrs Caffyn managed to make both
ends meet by the help of two or three pigs, by great economy, and by
letting some of her superfluous rooms. Great Oakhurst was not a show
place nor a Spa, but the Letherhead doctor had once recommended her
to a physician in London, who occasionally sent her a patient who
wanted nothing but rest and fresh air. She also, during the
shooting-season, was often asked to find a bedroom for visitors to
The Towers.
She might have done better had she been on thoroughly good terms with
the parson. She attended church on Sunday morning with tolerable
regularity. She never went inside a dissenting chapel, and was not
heretical on any definite theological point, but the rector and she
were not friends. She had lived in Surrey ever since she was a
child, but she was not Surrey born. Both her father and mother came
from the north country, and migrated southwards when she was very
young. They were better educated than the southerners amongst whom
they came; and although their daughter had no schooling beyond what
was obtainable in a Surrey village of that time, she was
distinguished by a certain superiority which she had inherited or
acquired from her parents. She was never subservient to the rector
after the fashion of her neighbours; she never curtsied to him, and
if he passed and nodded she said 'Marnin', sir,' in just the same
tone as that in which she said it to the smallest of the Great
Oakhurst farmers. Her church-going was an official duty incumbent
upon her as the proprietor of the only shop in the parish. She had
nothing to do with church matters except on Sunday, and she even went
so far as to neglect to send for the rector when one of her children
lay dying. She was attacked for the omission, but she defended
herself.