I know he’s trying to be “decent” to me, and yet not trying hard enough to make me feel it’s my duty to “play up” and to be unnaturally sweet in return.
Instead, I am beginning to feel that I shall soon be able to like him genuinely, just as I like Blanche and Theo, though perhaps not quite as well as I like his mother, who seems more of a darling every day.
This morning after I came back from driving to the station with the Governor, she called me, and I went into the little tiny room off the drawing-room, which is furnished only with one deep chair and her writing-table, but of which each wall is simply covered with framed photographs of her children at every stage.
She was sitting at the writing-table, with a pile of letters to answer.
“Sit in the big chair, Nancy. I won’t keep you more than a minute,” she said, turning to me, “but I wanted to speak to you. It’s about our summer plans, dear.”
“Oh, yes,” I began. The fortnight which I’d arranged to spend at The Lawn—and which seems about three months now!—is up to-morrow. I was just going to remind her of this, when she said, “We all—not only Billy!—are so anxious that you shall stay on, Nancy. You will, won’t you, if you haven’t made other arrangements?”
“Oh! I’ve made none,” I said, hesitating both in my official and unofficial capacities. I didn’t mind staying on, now. Still—ought I to do it?
“We have only a week or so,” said Mrs. Waters, “before we go away to the sea. That is, the girls and I are off on Saturday week to Anglesey.”
“To Porth Cariad?” I said. “Isn’t that the place—he told me about?”