The Visits of Elizabeth | Page 7

him, while Aunt Maria had a huge lot of soles. And there wasn't any need, because there were four men-servants in the room who could easily have done it at the side; but I remember you said it was always like that when you were a little girl. Well, it got on to puddings. I forgot to tell you, though, there were plenty of candles on the table, without shades, and a "bouquet" of flowers, all sorts (I am sure fixed in sand), in a gold middle thing. Well, about the puddings--at least four of them were planted on the table, awfully sweet and jammy, and Uncle John was quite irritated with me because I could only eat two; and Aunt Maria, who has got as deaf as a post, kept roaring to old Major Orwell, who sat next her, "Children have no healthy appetites as in our day. Eh! what?" And I wanted to scream in reply, "But I am grown up now, Aunt Maria!"
Uncle John asked me every question over and over, and old Lady Farrington's false teeth jumped so once or twice that I got quite nervous. That is the party, me, Major Orwell, Lady Farrington, and Uncle and Aunt.
When dessert was about coming, everything thing got lifted from the table, and before you could say "Jack Robinson" off whisked the cloth. I was so unprepared for it that I said "Oh!" and ducked my head, and that made the cloth catch on old Lady Farrington's cap--she had to sit on my side of the table, to be out of the draught--and, wasn't it dreadful, it almost pulled it off, and with it the grey curls fixed at the side, and the rest was all bald. So that was why it was so loose--there was nothing to pin it to! And she glared at me, and fixed it as straight as she could, but it had such a saucy look all the rest of the evening.
I did apologise as well as I could, and there was such an awkward pause; and after dinner we had coffee in the drawing-room, and then in a little time tea, and between times they sat down to whist, all but Aunt Maria--so they had to have a dummy. She wanted to hear all about you, she said, and my going to visit in France; and so I had to bellow descriptions of your neuralgia, and about Mme. de Croixmare being my godmother, &c., and Aunt Maria says, "Tut, tut!" as well as "Eh! what?" to everything. I had not remembered a bit what they were like; but I was only six, wasn't I, when we came last?
After she had asked every sort of thing about you under the sun, she kept giving longing glances at the dummy's cards; so I said, "Oh! Aunt Maria, I am afraid I am keeping you from your whist." As soon as I could make her hear, you should have seen how she hopped up like a two-year-old into the vacant seat; and they were far more serious about it than any one was at Nazeby, where they had hundreds on, and Aunt Maria and the others only played for counters--that long mother-o'-pearl fish kind. I looked at a book on the table, Lady Blessington's "Book of Beauty," and I see then every one got born with champagne-bottle shoulders. Had they been paring them for generations before, I wonder? Because old John, the keeper at Hendon, told me once that the best fox-terriers arrive now without any tails, their mothers' and grand-mothers' and great-grandmothers' having been cut off for so long; but I wonder, if the fashion changed, how could they get long tails again? There must be some way, because all of us now have square shoulders. But what was I saying? Oh! yes, when I had finished the "Beauty Book," I heard Aunt Maria getting so cross with the old boy opposite her. "You've revoked, Major Orwell," she said, whatever that means.
[Sidenote: An Old English Dinner]
Then hot spiced port came in--it was such a close night--and they all had some, and so did I, and it was good; and then candles came. Such lovely silver, and so beautifully cleaned; and Aunt and Uncle kissed me. I dodged Lady Farrington's false teeth, because, after her cap incident, she might have bitten me. And Uncle said, "Too late, too late for a little one to sit up--no beauty sleep!" And Aunt Maria said, "Tut, tut!" and I thought it must be the middle of the night--it felt like it. But do you know, Mamma, when I got upstairs to my room it was only half-past ten!
I have such a huge room, with a four-post feather bed in it. I had let Agnès go to bed directly