"Oh, this is enough for one day!" I said to M.
She understood, and we stayed, and let Exeter soak in.
She took me to one place and another, and one was the old "Mol's Coffee House" that flourished as such in the sixteenth century, but had been a private house at the time of the Armada. It is now in the occupation of a firm of picture-dealers, who also have the sole right of selling a certain pottery ware of local manufacture. M. was interested in a collection of water-colours they had on view--she is herself a charming water-colourist--but the setting of those pictures was the picture of them all. We climbed a little, dark, twisty oaken staircase that had echoed to the tread of Drake and Raleigh--the self-same stairs, just as when they clattered up and down; and we stood in the self-same oak-panelled chamber where they met their fellow-defenders of England's shores, to discuss and arrange plans for circumventing the enemy. I looked up from the water-colours of to-day to the age-bleached colours of their shields of arms in the age-blackened oak, and thought of those bygone committee meetings. Nothing changed since then, except the living air, and those who breathed it, and their use of the old place. It could not be put to better use. The firm in possession, who deal in art, are artistic enough to respect the relic in their care. The spirits of Drake and Monk and Raleigh, and the rest, might come o' nights to the old rendezvous, and not feel they had no business to be there. In that room I bought a packet of picture post cards--views of Exeter--that, artistically considered, are the best I found in England. Whenever I took one out to scribble on, I put it back in the envelope again, as too good to be defaced in the post and thrown away, and the package is still intact.
Then we went to a shop and I bought an umbrella. Does that seem an incongruous association of ideas? Nothing of the sort. The pleasure I have had, and still have, out of that umbrella, because of the place I bought it in, you would not believe. My hand fondles it every time I wrap its folds around its stick; I cannot put the loop over the button, or take it off, without all the loveliness of Exeter flooding my soul, the memories of that day.