Part 9 (1/2)

”So there are here. So we are not so very different in our tastes, you see.”

”Tell me truthfully,” I said, leaving this point; ”don't you like wearing pretty clothes?”

She blushed, and laughed. ”Perhaps I should if all my friends did,” she said, but added a little primly: ”You can be prettily dressed when you are poor, and you don't have to change your clothes two or three times a day to please your maid.”

”You wouldn't have to please your maid in England,” I said. ”She would have to please you, and if she didn't you would get rid of her and have another one.”

She looked at me incredulously. ”That is the most extraordinary thing you have told me yet,” she said. ”Servants here are the greatest nuisance in the world. They won't let you do a thing for yourself if they can possibly stop you, and you can't call your life your own. How I envy my cousins sometimes, who can go where they like and do what they like without for ever being obliged to think of finding work for a lot of disagreeable superior servants!”

”But can't you do what you like?” I asked. ”Aren't you and I going to do what we like this afternoon? Your servants haven't bothered us much so far.”

”Our servants are very kind to us. Of course it is not as though we really belonged to the rich. But I must say that I am rather surprised at their having left us alone for so long.”

As if in answer to her, the butler, Mr. Blother, and the footman, Lord Arthur, came out of the house at that moment, carrying a tray on which was a large jug of iced cup of some sort, and a dish of strawberries and cream.

”Oh, Mr. Blother!” exclaimed Miriam. ”You can't be so cruel as to expect us to eat and drink any more now!”

”My dear Miriam,” said Mr. Blother, in a fatherly manner, ”you must eat a few strawberries, or what is the good of the gardener picking them? I will let you off the hock cup until you have had a set or two; but I thought that both you and Mr. Howard would be able to drink it after you had got hot. It is quite time you began to play. Arthur and I are ready to field the b.a.l.l.s now, and we want some exercise out of doors badly.”

He and the footman bustled away to put up the net, and I went upstairs to put on a pair of tennis shoes. When I came down again the net was up and the racquets and b.a.l.l.s were ready for us.

Lord Arthur looked at me with some displeasure. ”I don't know why you couldn't have asked me to fetch your shoes,” he said. ”You and I will fall out if you bring your airs of poverty and independence here.”

”I'll give you some work to do, if that is what you want,” I said. ”I'm not very good at this game, and I am a hard and rather wild hitter.”

But it was Mr. Blother who fielded the b.a.l.l.s behind Miriam, and it pleased me to see him running about here and there in his swallowtail coat, and getting into a terrible state of perspiration and breathlessness.

When we had played a couple of sets it was Mr. Blother who stopped us.

”I think you have done enough for the present,” he said, wiping his heated brow. ”Thank you very much, Mr. Howard, for playing so badly. I have seldom enjoyed a game more. Now I think you can both manage to polish off some of that hock cup.”

I was quite ready to do so. I rather spoilt the good impression I had made on Mr. Blother by asking if he did not feel inclined for a drink himself. He withered me with his eye, and stalked off indoors, followed by the indignant Lord Arthur, who said to me as he pa.s.sed:

”You seem to have brought very queer ideas of behaviour with you, wherever you have come from.”

Miriam too looked at me doubtfully when we were once more left alone together. ”I know you only meant it for fun,” she said, ”but Mr. Blother is so kind and good that it is a shame to tease him.”

”But don't you think he would like a drink?” I asked. ”You saw how awfully hot he was.”

”Of course he would like it,” she said. ”That is why I think it is too bad to tease him.”

I enjoyed my own drink a good deal. Mr. Blother was a king of cup-makers.

Miriam sipped only half a gla.s.s, and I was careful not to press her to drink any more. I was quite capable of emptying the rest of the jug myself, and poured out a second gla.s.s, with the remark that I had not meant to offend Mr. Blother, and I would now try to make it up to him.

This pleased her, and she said, with her delightful frank and friendly smile: ”You are really awfully good, and I am sure the servants will adore you. We do our best to treat them well, but I am afraid we do grumble a lot, and you seem to do things to please them quite naturally.”

”We are brought up to be unselfish in England,” I said modestly, and filled a third gla.s.s, emptying the jug.