'Why? well, you must have been homesick!' said Louise.
'Well, I don't know—but at any rate I was very dull. They went to church so often, and I felt I ought to go too. One of the girls had been to Girton, and she is a little like Stella in some things—but the rest seem to look on her as a pagan.... I couldn't believe you had more sunshine here than you liked. You begin to understand why English people laugh so little.'
'But do they?' questioned Stella, who was listening and sewing by a French window that opened on the veranda. 'I think all the English people I have known laughed as much as we do; and what other nation has produced such humorists?'
'Oh yes, long ago. Now they laugh most when they are here—like Dr. Langdale. I should think there must be millions of women in England who never laughed out in all their lives. I suppose that's why they take everything so seriously. If you're five minutes late for breakfast they look at you as if you had stabbed the cook—or worse; for they would say a cook can be replaced, but if you waste the time you can never get it back.'
'You see, dear, we get rather lax ideas of punctuality in the long hot summers,' said Louise apologetically.
'Oh, my goodness! how I should like to see some of our relations there—panting on their bedroom floors instead of seeing that everyone is at the table to the minute! Such a fuss over wasting the time! Claude says it's part of "le cant Anglais." What better can you do when the sun never shows himself?'
'You speak as though you had been rather in a wet blanket there,' said Stella, smiling, 'and found the people rather agaçant. Now, I think nice English people are the nicest of all.'
'Yea, in Australia, away from the rest,' said Nell, with a sparkle in her eyes; 'but a houseful gets upon the nerves—and as for a whole country full of them, nothing but the thought of leaving it for Australia, say, keeps you up. I can see you don't take that in quite; but wait till you go there, Stella. I don't believe you would stay two days at your uncle's. They are for ever talking of church and the anti-Unionists.'
No doubt Mrs. Claude could have enlarged eloquently on the subject had it not been cut short by the entrance of her mother and sister Julia, who were speedily followed by Dr. Langdale. He stayed only a few minutes, however, being on his way to Nareen, and having merely called with a book for Stella. Mrs. Morton could never see Dr. Langdale without entering on conjectures as to whether he might not settle in Victoria, instead of returning to London when his year was up.
'We do so need good doctors in this country,' she said; 'and really the young men who take their degrees in Melbourne and Sydney seem anxious to cut people up just out of curiosity to see what's inside them.'