Mr. Sandboys congratulated one another that they were not on their way to suffer the miseries of a week's residence amidst either the dirt or the wickedness of the metropolis; but Elcy and Jobby began, for the first time, to feel that the retirement, which they heard so much vaunted every day, and which so many persons came from all parts of the country to look at and admire, cut them off from a considerable share of the pleasures which all the world else seemed so ready to enjoy, and which they began shrewdly to suspect were not quite so terrible as their father was in the habit of making out.
Thus matters continued at Hassness till the next Tuesday evening, when Mrs. Sandboys remarked that it was "very strange" that "Matthew Harker, t' grocer, had not been to village" with his pony and cart that day; and what she s'ud do for t' tea, and sugar, and soft bread, she didn't know."
Now, seeing that the nearest grocer was ten miles distant, and that there was no borrowing this necessary article from any of their neighbours, as the whole village was then safely housed in London, such a failure in the visit of the peripatetic tea-man, upon whom the inhabitants of Buttermere and Crummock Water one and all depended for their souchong, and lump, and moist, and wheaten bread, was a matter of more serious importance than a townsman might imagine.
It was therefore arranged that Postlethwaite their man should take Paddy t' pony over to Keswick the next day, to get the week's supply of grocery, and learn what had happened to Harker, in whom the Sandboys took a greater interest from the fact of their having subscribed, with others of the gentry, when Harker lost his hand by blasting cobbles, to start him in the grocery business, and provide him with a horse and cart to carry his goods round the country.
Postlethwaite—a long, grave, saturnine-looking man, who was "a little" hard of hearing, was, after much shouting in the kitchen, made to comprehend the nature of his errand. But he had quitted Hassness only a short hour, when he returned with the sad intelligence—which he had picked up from Ellick Crackenthorpe, who was left in charge of Keskadale, while the family had gone to town,—that Harker, finding all the folk about Keswick had departed for the Great Exhibition, and hearing that Buttermere had done the same, had put his wife and his nine children inside his own van, and was at that time crawling up by easy stages to London.
Moreover, Postlethwaite brought in the dreary tidings that, in coming down from the top of the Hause, just by Bear's fall, Paddy had cast a shoe, and that it was as much as he could do to get him down the Moss side. This calamity was a matter of as much delight to the youngsters as it was of annoyance to the elder Sandboys; for seeing that Bob Beck, the nearest blacksmith, lived six miles distant, and that it was impossible to send either to Cockermouth or Keswick for the necessaries of life, until the pony was armed against the rockiness of the road, it became a matter of considerable difficulty to settle what could be done.
