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.
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