“That’s a most obvious remark, Mr Staunton; but I didn’t mean fogs. I don’t believe the country ever gives one just such a feel of summer as there is now. Hot air, balcony-flowers, rustling brown trees, they’re drier and more papery than country ones; sunny dust, dusty sun, and people, pavements, and omnibuses, and undergrounds—and smart fashionable clothes. It’s so summery! Nobody’s got the idea exactly,” she said. “Of course Dickens has a London feel; but that’s on another level, ghastly and squalid—or best parlour and hot-buttered toast; nor does it quite belong to the swells, though it has fashion and the season in it, too.”
“Your idea is coming?” said Mr Staunton, watching her curiously.
“I’ve got it!” said Constancy, sitting up with a broad smile of pleasure. “It’s modern—it’s democratic. It’s life’s fulness, roses, strawberries, sun, summer—got with some trouble, for the many. So there’s a little dust. You have the best of everything—music, parties; but you go by the underground!”
When Constancy was present, she always took the stage—or, rather, people gave it to her—she commanded attention. She was now at college, thinking, talking, making friends according to her wont, and though her literary ambitions were necessarily much in abeyance, she wrote, now and then, an article or short story, which had just the distinction that wins acceptance, and was not quite like every one else’s.
The youngest Miss Staunton was a college friend, and Constancy was intimate with her family, which consisted of two or three sisters, all busy with various forms of self-help and self-expression, and of the brother now present. The whole party lived harmoniously together, on a conjunction of small incomes, on terms of mutual independence, and, as Constancy epigrammatically put it, “went into society in the underground,” and into very good society too, which is no doubt a modern and democratic development.
“Don’t let us collect material for magazine articles,” said Violet Staunton; “but let us settle about the reading party. Cuthbert has heard of a jolly old-fashioned place on the moors up above Rilston, in Yorkshire, within reach of all kinds of fine scenery.”
“Rilston!” interposed Constancy. “We stayed once with Aunt Connie, at a place near there—Waynflete.”
“How odd!” said Violet. “It was from Mr Waynflete that Cuth heard of the place.”
“Guy Waynflete is a friend of mine,” said Mr Staunton. “I stayed with him once at Ingleby. We came upon Moorhead in our walks, and I should think it might suit for the preparation of future double firsts and senior-wranglers.”
“Thank you, Mr Staunton,” said Constancy, frankly rising to the bait. “I dare say you would expect to find us crocheting antimacassars!”