The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel | Page 6

"j'ints."
"I can see by yer hands ye're a great sufferer," she said.
"Alas! madam, one of the penalties of old age," grandmamma replied, in her fine, thin voice.
Then Mrs. Gurrage explained just how the mixture was to be rubbed in, and all about it. During this I had been trying to talk to Miss Hoad, but she was so ill at ease and so taken up with looking round the room that we soon lapsed into silence. Presently I heard Mrs. Gurrage say--she also had been busy examining the room:
"Well, you have been good tenants, coverin' up the suite, but you've no call to do it. You wouldn't be likely to soil it much, and I always say when you let a house furnished, you can't expect it to continue without wear and tear; so don't, please, bother to cover it with those old things. Lor' bless me, it takes me back to see it! It was my first suite after I married Mr. Gurrage, and we had a pretty place on Balham Hill. We put it here because Augustus did not want anything the least shabby up at The Hall, and I take it kind of you to have cared for it so."
Grandmamma's face never changed; not the least twinkle came into her eye--she is wonderful. I could hardly keep from gurgling with laughter and was obliged to make quite an irritating rattle with the teaspoons. Grandmamma frowned at that.
By the end of the visit we had been invited to view all the glories of The Hall. (The place is called Ledstone Park; The Hall, apparently, is Mrs. Gurrage's pet name for the house itself.) We would not find anything old or shabby there, she assured us.
When they had gone grandmamma said to me, in a voice that always causes my knees to shake, "Why did you not make a r��v��rence to Mrs. Gurrage, may I ask?"
"Oh, grandmamma," I said, "courtesy to that person! She would not have understood in the least, and would only have thought it was the village 'bob' to a superior."
"My child,"--grandmamma's voice can be terrible in its fine distinctness--"my teaching has been of little avail if you have not understood the point, that one has not good manners for the effect they produce--but for what is due to one's self. This person--who, I admit, should have entered by the back door and stayed in the kitchen with Hephzibah--happened to be our guest and is a woman of years--and yet, because she displeased your senses you failed to remember that you yourself are a gentlewoman. What she thought or thinks is of not the smallest importance in the world, but let me ask you in future to remember, at least, that you are my granddaughter."
A big lump came in my throat.
I hate the Gurrages!
The next day one of the old maids--a Miss Burton--arrived just as we were having tea. She was full of excitement at the return of the owners of Ledstone, and gave us a quantity of information about them in spite of grandmamma's aloofness from all gossip. It appears, even in the country in England, Mrs. Gurrage is considered quite an oddity, but every one knows and accepts her, because she is so charitable and gives hundreds to any scheme the great ladies start.
She was the daughter of a small publican in one of the southern counties, Miss Burton said, and married Mr. Gurrage, then a commercial traveller in carpets. (How does one travel in carpets?) Anyway, whatever that is, he rose and became a partner, and finally amassed a huge fortune, and when they were both quite old they got "Augustus." He was "a puny, delicate boy," to quote Miss Burton again, and was not sent to school--only to Cambridge later on. Perhaps that is what gives him that look of his things fitting wrong, and his skin being puffy and flabby, as if he had never been knocked about by other boys. My friend of the knife, even with his coating of mud, looked quite different.
Oh! I wonder if I shall ever know any people of one's own sort that one has not to be polite to against the grain because one happens to be one's self a lady. Perhaps there are numbers of nice people in this neighborhood, but they naturally don't trouble about us in our tiny cottage, and so we see practically nobody.
Just as Miss Burton was leaving Mr. Gurrage rode up. He tried to open the gate with the end of his whip, but he could not, and would have had to dismount only Miss Burton rushed forward to open it for him. Then he got down and held the bridle over his arm and walked up the little path.
"Send some one to hold my horse," he said