Lucia's Progress by E. F Benson

Author:E. F Benson [Benson, E. F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Novels
Publisher: Project Gutenberg Australia
Published: 2011-03-26T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

For the next few days Lucia was never once seen in the streets of Tilling, for all day she supervised the excavations in her garden. To the great indignation of her gardener, she hired two unemployed labourers at very high wages in view of the importance of their work, and set them to dig a trench across the potato-patch which Elizabeth had despoiled and the corner of the asparagus bed, so that she must again strike the line of the hot-air flue, which had been so providentially discovered at the corner of the garden-room. Great was her triumph when she hit it once more, though it was a pity to find that it still ran through the earth, and not, as she had hoped through the buried remains of a wall. But the soil was rich in relics, it abounded in pieces of pottery on the same type as those she had decided were Roman, and there were many pretty fragments of iridescent, oxydised glass, and a few bones which she hoped might turn out to be those of red deer which at the time of the Roman occupation were common in Kent and Sussex. Her big table in the garden-room was cleared of its books and writing apparatus, and loaded with cardboard trays of glass and pottery. She scarcely entered the Office at all, and but skimmed through the communications from Mammoncash.

Georgie dined with her on the evening of the joyful day when she had come across the hot-air flue again. There was a slightly earthy odour in the garden-room where after dinner they pored over fragments of pottery, and vainly endeavoured to make pieces fit together.

"It's most important, Georgie," she said, "as you will readily understand, to keep note of the levels at which objects are discovered. Those in Tray D come from four feet down in the corner of the asparagus bed: that is the lowest level we have reached at present, and they, of course, are the earliest."

"Oh, and look at Tray A," said Georgie. "All those pieces of clay tobacco pipes. I didn't know the Romans smoked. Did they?"

Lucia gave a slightly superior laugh.

"Caro, of course they didn't," she said. "Tray A: yes, I thought so. Tray A is from a much higher level, let me see, yes, a foot below the surface of the ground. We may put it down therefore as being subsequent to Queen Elizabeth when tobacco was introduced. At a guess I should say those pipes were Cromwellian. A Cromwellian look, I fancy. I am rather inclined to take a complete tile from the continuation of the air flue which I laid bare this morning, and see if it is marked in full S.P.Q.R. The tile from the street, you remember, was broken and had only S.P. on it. Yet is it a Vandalism to meddle at all with such a fine specimen of a flue evidently in situ?"

"I think I should do it," said Georgie, "you can put it back when you've found the letters.

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