After Miss Holt’s “Do you ever call him Billy, by any chance?” and my solemn “Never!” to realize that the man who Miss Robinson vowed “could never have been anything so human as a little boy” does actually possess that characteristically little-boyish pet-name! And I suppose I shall be expected to call him that while I’m here? My goodness! “William” I was prepared for. “William,” with its touch of stiffness—and—stateliness, I might manage. But——Still, if I must, I must. In for a penny, in for a pound. (Only in this case it’s meant being in for five hundred pounds!)
And then that he should have that unexpected, that utterly uncharacteristic, that un-Waters-like sort of mother! Welcoming me like that! All I can say is that he—the Governor—must take after his father exactly!
And the house! Not in the least like a sarcophagus—or even the corner of the British Museum with Near Oriental fittings, as I’d pictured it!
Looking round this bedroom they’ve put me into, I see it’s exactly the sort that I’ve always loved, particularly since my lot has been cast in that poky little egg-box of a Battersea flat, with one skimpy strip of bedroom window giving on a view of grimy-grey back-yard, a kennel made out of a packing-case, and lines of washing hanging out to dry.
Here, at The Lawn, my quarters do seem so palatially big and airy! There’s miles of wardrobe space for my new things, I see. And what a lovely long mirror! That delicious scent of lavender and pot-pourri comes from the big china bowl on the window-ledge. There’s a wide bay of casement-windows looking out on to that wonderful lawn, sprays of feathery mauve wistaria tap against the panes outside. Inside, rose-peonies and giant tulips riot over the cream-and-red-and-pink-patterned chintzes of hangings and upholstery. The wallpaper is sprinkled with bouquets of rosebuds caught up with ribbons; and the bed-spread is of glowing rose-colour. No trace anywhere of those “Art-muds” and sad sage-greens that even well-off people get into their rooms so often now. Why can’t they realize that greens, to be successful, must be kept out of doors? Green as an indoor background, no! I’d have chosen just these gay, dainty patterns and colours for my bedroom, if——
But what’s the use of thinking over the house I might have had? I’m not going to. I ought to be breathlessly thankful that this one where I have to spend a fortnight is turning out to be so much more congenial than I’d hoped, and that “his” people are quite unlike “him!”
How suddenly “right” my dear old silver-and-crystal toilette things look against the setting of the Sheraton dressing-table with the plate-glass top! To think that one dismal wet day I nearly packed them all up and sent them off by Mrs. Skinner to be “put away,” and the price thereof turned into new boots! “Boots a poor typist must have,” I argued. “Silver-topped bottles and luxuries of that sort she doesn’t need any more.” How frightfully glad I am, now, that I hadn’t the heart to do it after all, that I sent my shoes to be re-soled instead—and that all my own monogrammed brushes are mirrored in the oval glass beside that lustre jar of rich, mahogany-coloured wall-flowers that, next to my own dark head and its moving reflections, seem to give the deepest touch of colour in the room. I suppose the girls put those there—Yes! That’s another shock. The sisters! That he should have sisters like——
A tap at the door.
“Come in!”
Enter, explosively, the excited little white dog, followed by a large and shiny copper can, and the eyes—they seem to dominate everything else about that child!—of Theodora.