"Beatrice, come in here instantly," called my aunt in a voice there was no gainsaying.
So, leaving the hose where it lay, and without another glance at the trellis, in I dashed through the French window into our drawing-room.
A queer mixture of a room it is. So like us; so typical of our circumstances! A threadbare carpet and the cheapest bamboo easy-chairs live cheek-by-jowl with a priceless Chippendale cabinet from Lovelace Court, holding a few pieces of china that represent the light of other days. Upon the faded cheap wallpaper there hangs the pride of our home, the Gainsborough portrait of one chestnut-haired, slim-throated ancestress, Lady Anastasia Lovelace, in white muslin and a blue sash, painted on the terrace steps at Lovelace Court.
This was the background to the figure of my Aunt Anastasia, who stood, holding herself as stiff as a poker (she is very nearly as slim, even though she's fifty-three) in her three-year-old grey alpaca gown with the little eightpence-three-farthings white collar fastened by her pearl brooch with granny's hair in it.
Her face told me what to expect. A heated flush, and no lips. One of Auntie's worst tempers!
"Beatrice!" she exclaimed in a low, agitated tone. "I am ashamed of you. I am ashamed of you." She could not have said it more fervently if I'd been found forging cheques. "After all my care! To see you hobnobbing like a housemaid with these people!"
Aunt Anastasia always mentions the people here as who should say "the worms in the flower-beds" or "the blight upon the rambler-roses."
"I wasn't hobnobbing, Auntie," I defended myself. "Er—he only offered me the hose to——"
"The thinnest of excuses," put in my aunt, curling what was left visible of her lips. "You need not have taken the hose."
"He put it right into my hand."