However, the day before he was to come, Miss Read arrived, which was an idea of my mother's, and a very good one. Miss Read had been Nina's governess for eight years, and she knew all of us better than we knew ourselves. She was a kind of tonic when any of us were depressed, and a cooling draught when we were angry; in my case she had seldom been a tonic, but all the same when she had left us at Easter I was very sorry. She was the only person I have ever seen of whom Nina was really afraid. I am sure she could have told some funny tales if she had felt inclined. She was supposed to be coming to see Nina, who was going to Paris in a few weeks to be "finished," but I am sure that my mother thought Owen would like her, and that she would like him. And as it happened, they were both botanists and butterfly-catchers, at least Miss Read knew a lot about butterflies, though her time for catching them had gone by, and they were always doing things together.
Worcestershire must certainly be a better place than West Ham for a botanist, and after Owen had got used to us I believe he enjoyed himself. We worked together in the mornings, which pleased my father, and he let my mother give him as much medicine as she wanted to, which pleased her, and I feeling virtuous after reading every morning for nearly four hours, was very pleased with myself. But he was in a mortal terror of Nina, though she really never gave him any cause to be, and made the most valiant efforts to learn the Latin names of plants. Miss Read and he made excursions and grubbed about in hedges, and Nina and I often met them at some place to have tea. It wasn't very exciting, for I had always to carry the kettle and the things to eat; but the sun shone most of the time, which was really a blessing, because on wet days Owen persuaded me to work in the afternoons as well as the mornings, and that was more than I had ever thought of doing in a vac.
I suppose Owen was what is generally called a smug, but he was not one by choice but by compulsion, which is the best kind I should think. He was so totally different from any other kind of friend I have ever had that I sometimes caught myself wondering whether I really liked him. But I could always satisfy myself about that, for there was one thing about him which no one could help liking; he was most tremendously clever and never tried to make out that he was, and having already seen plenty of people who were about as clever as I was, and who talked as if they were Solomon and Solon rolled into one, I was grateful to him. We got on very well together, though we had not got a single thing in common, except that we both liked sunshine; and that can't be said to be much, for I have only met one man in England who did not like the sun, and he had been affected, permanently, by too much of it.
Men get blamed freely enough for putting on side about playing cricket and football well, and they deserve all they get, but the men who put on intellectual side ought, I think, to be spoken to more severely, because they get worse as they get older, while the first sort of side generally dies an early death. Owen was a kind of encyclopaedia, who did not air or advertise himself, and I thought him a very rare specimen. Athletics meant no more to him than botany or butterflies meant to me, but when he went away my father said emphatically that it was refreshing to think Oxford turned out some men who took interest in useful things. I did not answer that remark, because he did not really know very much about Oxford, and his occasional hobby was that the country was being ruined by too many games. "A very well-conducted young man," he said of Owen, "always up in the morning, and always ready to go to bed at night."
"He looked much better when he went away than when he came," my mother said; "I hope we shall see him down here again."
"I think he means to make a name for himself," Miss Read added; "he knows exactly what he wants."
Nina yawned, and although I thought my father need not have described Owen as a well-conducted young man, I was thankful that his visit had passed off so well, and I said nothing.
After Owen had gone away we had a fellow to stay with us out of my brother's regiment. He was home on sick-leave, but had quite recovered from whatever had been the matter with him, and was as full of bounce as a tennis-ball. Mrs. Faulkner loved him and wanted Nina to follow her example, as far as I could make out, for she gave a dance and a moonlight supper party on the river. Mr. Faulkner, who was always more or less semi-detached, disappeared before the supper-party, which he told me was a midsummer madness.
"There will be a mist and the food will be damp and horrid, and everybody will be wanting foot-warmers and hot-water bottles before they have done, you had better put on your thickest clothes and borrow my fur overcoat," he said to me. And he was a true prophet, for Nina caught a violent cold in her head, which checked and really put a stop to a more violent flirtation.
Nina went to Paris a few days after Fred came to us, and we all agreed that she would enjoy herself there, though I do not believe that any of us really thought she would. As a matter-of-fact she was so home-sick that my mother would have gone to fetch her back if it had not been for Miss Read, who was blessed with much courage and common-sense. Mrs. Faulkner tried her hardest to persuade my mother to bring Nina home again, and she came to our house and wept so much that I thought she was sure to win. But Miss Read met tears with arguments, until Mrs. Faulkner stopped crying, and having lost her temper, forgot that Miss Read had not only been Nina's governess, but was also one of my mother's greatest friends. So Nina stayed in Paris, and I wrote to her twice a week for a fortnight, but after that she began sending me messages in other people's letters, and I was sorry for her no longer.