Nancy came hurrying out to meet him before he got to the front door.
“We had some excitement last night, Gregory,” she said. He noted with pleasure she had at last brought herself to use .his first name.
“Something bright and glaring!” she said. “I was retiring, when this noise come and then this light, and I rush to look out through the curtains, and there’s this here great thing like an egg sinking into our pond.” In her speech, and particularly when she was excited, she carried the lilting accent of Norfolk.
“The meteor!” Gregory exclaimed. “Bruce Fox and I were out last night, as we were the night before, watching for the lovely Aurigids that arrive every February, when we saw an extra big one. I said then it was coming over very near here.”
“Why, it almost landed on our house,” Nancy said. She looked very pleasing this morning, with her lips red, her cheeks shining, and her chestnut curls all astray. As she spoke, her mother appeared in apron and cap, with a wrap hurriedly thrown over her shoulders.
“Nancy, you come in, standing freezing like that! You ent daft, girl are you? Hello, Gregory, how be going on? I didn’t reckon as we’d see you today. Come in and warm yourself.”
“Good-day to you, Mrs. Grendon. I’m hearing about your wonderful meteor of last night.”
“It was a falling star, according to Bert Neckland. I ent sure what it was, but it certainly stirred up the animals, that I do know.”
“Can you see anything of it in the pond?” Gregory asked.
“Let me show you,” Nancy said.
Mrs. Grendon returned indoors. She went slowly and grandly, her back straight and an unaccustomed load before her. Nancy was her only daughter; there was a younger son, Archie, a stubborn lad who had fallen at odds .with his father and now was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Norwich; and no other children living. Three infants had not survived the mixture of fogs alternating with bitter east winds that comprised the typical Cottersall winter. But now the farmer’s wife was unexpectedly gravid again, and would bear her husband another baby when the spring came in.
As Nancy led Gregory over to the pond, he saw Grendon with his two laborers working in the West Field, but they did not wave.
“Was your father not excited by the arrival last night?”
“That he waswhen it happened! He went out with his shotgun, and Bert Neckland with him. But there was nothing to see but bubbles in the pond and steam over it, and this morning he wouldn’t discuss it, and said that work must go on whatever happen.”
They stood beside the pond, a dark and extensive slab of water with rushes on the farther bank and open country beyond. As they looked at its ruffled surface, they stood with the windmill black and bulky on their left hand. It was to this that Nancy now pointed.
Mud had been splashed across the boards high up the sides of the mill; some was to be seen even on the top of the nearest white sail. Gregory surveyed it all with interest. Nancy, however, was still pursuing her own line of thought.
“Don’t you reckon Father works too hard, Gregory? When he’s not outside doing jobs, he’s in reading his pamphlets and his electricity manuals. He never rests but when he sleeps.”
“Um. Whatever went into the pond went in with a great smack! There’s no sign of anything there now, is there? Not that you can see an inch below the surface.”
“You being a friend of his. Mum thought perhaps as you’d say something to him. He don’t go to bed till ever so latesometimes it’s near midnight, and then he’s up again at three and a half o’clock. Would you speak to him? You know Mother dassent.”
“Nancy, we ought to see whatever it was that went in the pond. It can’t have dissolved. How deep is the water? Is it very deep?”
“Oh, you aren’t listening, Gregory Rolles! Bother the old meteor!”
“This is a matter of science, Nancy. Don’t you see”
“Oh, rotten old science, is it? Then I don’t want to hear. I’m cold, standing out here. You can have a good look if you like but I’m going in before I gets froze. It was only an old stone out of the sky, because I heard Father and Bert Neckland agree to it.”