CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CROWDED HOLIDAY
We have now been staying for two crowded days at the "Refuge." It has certainly been the most extraordinary holiday of my life. A quite indescribable one, too!
For when I try to put down in words my impression of what has been happening, I find in my mind nothing but the wildest jumble of things. There's a background of sun-lit, open country, wide blue sky patrolled by rolling white clouds, green downs strewn with loose flint, chalk wastes on which a patch of scarlet poppies stands out like a made-up mouth on a dead white face of a pierrot, glimpses of pale cliff beyond the downs, and of silver-grey Channel further still.
These things are blurred in a merry chaos with so many new faces! There's the drowsy, good-natured, voluptuous face of "Marmora, the breathing statue-girl," as she lounged in the deck-chair in the shadow of the lilacs, crunching Mackintosh's toffee-de-luxe and reading "The Rosary." The tiny, vivacious face of the Boy-Impersonator. The shrewd face of Vi Vassity, the mistress of the "Refuge," melting into unexpected tenderness as she bends over the new baby that belongs to the ventriloquist's wife, the little bundle with the creasy pink face and the hands that are just clusters of honeysuckle buds....
So many sounds, too, are mixed up with this jumble of fresh impressions!
Rustling of sea winds in the immemorial elm trees. Buzzing of bees in the tall limes all hung with light-green fragrant tassels! Twittering of birds! Comfortable, crooning noises of plump poultry in the back yard of the "Refuge."
Through all these sound the chatter and loud laughter of the "resting" theatrical girls with their eternal confidences that begin, "I said to him just like this," and their "Excuse me, dears," and their sudden bursts of song. How the general rush, and whirl, and glitter, and clatter of them would make my Aunt Anastasia feel perfectly faint!