Flo started to thank her, but she turned away without listening, making towards the nearest dinner-tent, and the farmer, after a slow droop of his right eyelid, followed.
“Where you goin’?” Flo heard Jack Knight ask from behind. He had not spoken since their meeting with Mr. Nadin, and she had momentarily forgotten him. “If you dunna know your way about, come wi’ me,” he invited. “Rum cup o’ tea, them two, eh? Shell stick to ’im like a shadow all day. When they’re at home she’s boss all right; but when he’s out of her sight she’s like a cow without its calf.”
“She made me come with her . . . just so he’d have to pay,” said Flo, laughing uneasily. “Won’t I be a nuisance?”
“Come on,” he said abruptly, ignoring her question. “There’s a lot o’ things I want ta see, but you say what you want an’ we’ll work ’em in best as we can.”
He went sturdily just a little ahead of her.
“There’s nothing I know of. It . . . it’s all new to me,” said Flo. “Anything’s all right . . .”
“You’ll want ta see the flowers, anyway. I should think best time’s now, before the afternoon crowd.”
He went on without hesitation as if he knew the showground as well as Moss or Mossdyche valley. As they stood aside a moment at the marquee opening for a convoy of people to pass out he told her that they couldn’t see everything, but he’d show her what was what. He’d been round already, first thing. Flo was content. His quiet, partly husky voice took hold of her. He walked with quick short steps, slipping through the crowd in a curious lithe way, so that she had difficulty in keeping up. Sometimes half a dozen persons separated them, but his light uncovered upstanding hair was a good guide, and whenever he got ahead he waited patiently, Their first stop was at a big stall set out with carnations in tiers. Flo exclaimed at the many different colours, the frilling, the velvety sheen of the darker blooms. Jack pointed to a very dark wine, but she didn’t like that as much as a beautiful salmon pink with an orange glow in its depths. He took a tattered red-backed notebook out of his side pocket and pencilled the name down.
“All right, I’ll try ’em both,” he said.
“Where?” asked Flo.
“In one of the greenhouses,” he answered, matter of fact. “It won’t be tomatoes all the time,” and he smiled, his blue eyes meeting her’s intimately so that for a moment it seemed to her that there was no one else in the marquee. “How about roses next?” he suggested after the shortest pause.
Then he was showing her the table decorations. She chose the table with flesh pink sweet-peas and long emerald ropes of smilax.
“Get away,” he said, “that’s all love and honey. That kind of thing’s bin seen since the year dot,” and he took her to a table done all with catmint, rose-pink, blue and mauve, with a few old-fashioned clove pinks for contrast. “Don’t say you like it if you don’t.”
“It’s . . . it’s very nice.”
“But you’d rather have the other?”
“It . . . it’s cold, somehow.”
“But it’s new,” he laughed. “It got first, anyway.”
Next without saying where they were going he led her into a second large marquee set out with scores of card tables covered with paper cloths designed to imitate Belfast damask.
“Half a crown a time,” he explained briefly. “It’s a tiring job, show-lookin’. No sense in doing without. An’ if we leave it later we’ll never get in.”
As it was they had a job to find a table to themselves. There was no choice of food, the same for everybody—sliced ham and tongue and green salad with hot new potatoes and pats of butter. Flo had never had this mixture before, but found it good and filling. After that came Victorian plums and custard, and finally coffee and cheese. Jack talked nearly all the time . . . about carnations, about roses.
“If I grow owt I want ta grow it good,” he said thoughtfully.
Then he switched to noticing the people; trying to guess what they all were.
“It’s just a day out for most of ’em. They don’t know a ewe from a goat, but they enjoy themselves.”
Flo was aware that she was enjoying herself also. Jack’s slow, but nearly continuous, talk left her completely at ease. And yet it was interesting talk. She realized that he was really thinking aloud; she was seeing the show and the people not only herself but through his eyes as well. And he knew so much more about country things and country folk that she was content to listen and learn.
“I’d like ta bet that he’s from Ashbourne way,” nodding to a spare man in stained whipcord breeches and noticeable new black leggings. “Sheep man . . . used ta working with his hands in his cross-pockets an’ a stick under his arm. Dogs do th’ work on a sheep farm.”
Jack was known to many of the people who kept coming in and mooching round for tables. It was always, “Hello, Jack, how’s things?” Never his surname. He answered them all the same with ready ease.
“Won’t they wonder who I am?” Flo asked, self-conscious.
“Oh, I’m usually with someone fresh . . . it won’t worry ’em,” he answered lightly, and she was sorry that she had spoken.
He ate slowly and took ten minutes to sip his coffee. But at last he was ready. “How’d it be,” he said, “if we go where I want, to the greenhouses an’ the pamphlets, an’ then we’ll see what time there is . . .?” She agreed; she was willing to go anywhere. The greenhouses turned out to be empty, just shells for sale, and he poked about to see how everything worked and made notes and asked questions, but in such a companionable way that the salesman answered willingly for twenty minutes, although he must have known for more than half the time that Jack was no purchaser. And next the “pamphlets”, Flo found, were Ministry of Agriculture bulletins and leaflets displayed on a stall which reminded her of a railway inquiry bureau where one went about holidays. There were two young men to answer everything. They wore plus-fours and red-white-and-green college ties. One was superior and the other too affable. Jack opened books and studied pamphlets with the affable one always after him trying to tell him something which apparently he didn’t want to know. Jack simply kept quiet and read what he wanted, till at last he got left in peace. Hardly anybody else came to the stall, and Flo got rather tired of it because there were not many folk in the vicinity either. The day was still grey, but there was no sign of it going any worse, and it was mild, so she listened to the band from the distance and wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Nadin were doing.
“Four and six, please,” she woke up to hear the affable college boy saying. “You’ll grow something if you follow out all that those say.”
Flo was surprised at the bundle. Jack looked pleased and seemed to have no idea that she might have been bored.
“Doesn’t that show,” he said glancing back; “hardly anybody there, an’ yet there it all is, damn near for nothin’.”
“All what?”
“All the latest about everything. The government an’ the universities spend I dunno how much experimentin’ an’ findin’ out. An’ they put it all out cheap so’s anybody can have it, an’ nobody cares. Old man Nadin there muckin’ his hay about; thinks I’m daft tryin’ to tell him. But it’s all there.”
“He wouldn’t like being talked at like that young man talked at you,” said Flo thoughtfully.
“I know he wouldna. They’re th’ wrong type for some folk. I dunna mind; I just let ’em talk. But trouble is some folk winna learn from anybody. I got some fine stuff here on startin’ a hot-house . . . just what I want. If I’d got a book from a shop it ’ud cost quids.”