The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel | Page 6

black and gold,
upholstered with magenta, but we have covered that up as well as we
can with pieces of old brocade from grandmamma's stored treasures.
After the first greetings were over and Mrs. Gurrage had seated herself

in the other arm-chair, her knees pointing north and south, she began
about the rheumatism stuff for the "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 révérence 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