THE HOSTESS OF CLOVER INN

New Zealand Tablet, 10 April 1913, Page 9

THE HOSTESS OF CLOVER INN

Clover Inn stands in a triangular garden with an outlying meadow, at the fork of the roads to Clinton and Greenbrier. It is a one-storey building with slanting roof in which blink many garret windows, a roof far projecting and shadowing the rough porch which extends on the four sides of the hostelry. The Clover, before the building of the railroad, had been a famous inn, and in these latter days, though little money is taken in except in the summer season, it has not degenerated in its keep. The house remains uniformly neat and clean, the garden paths and flower beds trim and weedless, and from the kitchen still come the soups and meats that have made the culinary art of the Widow Bobbins noted far and near. There were diversities of opinion among the people of Oakwood on many subjects, but everyone agreed that the widow was a first-rate cook and a thoroughly upright woman. ' She would be a saint if 'twarn't for her temper,' said Miss Pinky White to Mr. Hoddle, who kept the 'general' store, that modest country counterpart of the great department stores of the city. 'An' it 'pears to me, Miss Pinky, that that's modified considerable of late,' said Mr. Hoddle. ' It have ever since Louis did depart for places unknown/ declared Miss Pinky; continuing in a tone of reflection, 'Dear senses, how time do fly! I was quite a young girl when that event transpired.' ' A lady is as young as she looks an' there is immortal flowers,' responded Mr. Hoddle gallantly. Miss Pinky, turned fifty, received the compliment with a blush, and decided to take a dress of that polka dot calico over which she had wavered for upwards of an hour. It was a warm June afternoon, and on her way home Miss Pinky waddled along the path exposed to the rays of the sun. She decided in her mind that, as she had to pass the inn, she would pay a ' pop visit' and exhibit her purchase to the Widow Bobbins, for whose opinion she had great respect. Making her way without ceremony, to the far end of the hall that cut the inn in two, Miss Pinky entered without knocking, the widow's sitting-room, a spruce little apartment with casement windows, at one end of which sat the widow in a rocking-chair, hemming an article of wearing apparel. 'Pinky White!' she exclaimed, bundling up her work in her lap, and jumping up from her chair. 'I certainly am so glad to see you ; I'd a' sent for you if you hadn't come. But set right down here where it's cool, an' take this palm leaf. You are —not that I'm casting reflections; it's healthy an' keeps back the appearance of years, but one does get betted up, one certainly does.' The widow herself was thin and wiry and possessed a pair of sharp eyes that had never needed what she would have denominated as ' specs.' The acute sharpness of her eyes belied, though, a heart big and boundlessly hospitable. 'You've got something particular on your mind?' queried Miss Pinky, sinking back in the companion chair to the window, and wielding the fan presented her. 'I have,' said the widow with emphasis. 'I have had a dream and it has upset me!' Miss Pinky raised her hands and the 'palm leaf in consternation. ' Mattie Robbins!' she ejaculated, •ol all the unreasonable women you're the unreasonabiest, a-believin' in dreams! Don't you know its against the catechiz, puttin' faith in dreams, -omens, an' all such like?' 'I know my catechiz, Pinky, an' I never misdoubted aught that is there contained, only I know