Clara Hopgood

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.