CHAPTER VI
"Oh! How slack I feel. Dances are the devil!" Maud Matthews yawned and stretched amid a nest of cushions in a long chair. "I'm sure I must look about sixty. Do I, Stella?"
She appealed to her friend who at that moment joined her in the veranda of the Swiss Chalet-like habitation perched on the hill-side. Clear midday sunshine blazed over the terraced garden thick with dahlias, crimson and purple, orange-red, yellow, a wild, luxuriant growth. Pots of chrysanthemums fringed the veranda steps, an autumn odour pervaded the atmosphere, a smell of ferns and moss and pungent evaporation. The sky was like pale blue glass, and far, far away, beyond valleys and rising ranges, glittered and sparkled the everlasting snows.
Outside, on the narrow pathway, young Richard was asserting himself in a perambulator, attended by the long-suffering ayah who every few minutes retrieved a woolly toy, handing it back to the small tyrant with indulgent remonstrance. "Hai-yai! What is to be done with such a malefactor! Must not throw; it is forbidden."
"Beat him," his mother advised lazily. "Beat him with a big stick."
"Dost harken?" warned the ayah. "One more throw, and see what will befall!"
Instantly the woolly toy was again hurtled down among the dahlias, and the child shrieked with mischievous glee.
"Aree! Narty!" the ayah picked up her petticoats and plunged into the foliage.
Unperturbed by her son's misdemeanours, Mrs. Matthews turned once more to her guest and began to patter nonsense. Truth to tell she was nervously delaying the moment when Stella's questions must be answered.
"If possible, dear thing, you look even more dreadful than I do, though you went home so early last night. I got back at some disreputable hour and peeped into your room, but you were asleep. Really, to look at you, one would imagine your husband was coming up on leave next week instead of mine. What on earth shall I do with Dick! He'll hate all my men friends, and be rude to them, and expect me to break all my engagements. I suppose we shall go to bed early and have long walks before breakfast, and devote ourselves to young Richard with intervals for arguments over domestic affairs——"