"But if I drink my soup sideways I make a noise," she expostulated. "And Aunt Lucy—I mean Mrs. Fawcus told me not to make a noise."
"I do not make a noise, do I?" Grandmamma asked with raised eyebrows.
Mary longed to tell her that she did make a noise sometimes and that, when she was drinking, in the silence of the large dining-room it sounded like pigeons cooing far away.
"And don't keep pulling up your stockings like that," Grandmamma would say.
"But one of them keeps coming down."
"In that case go to Adèle and ask her to tighten your garter."
"But it's too tight already," Mary objected. "When I undress you can see all crinkles where it was round my leg."
"And don't argue with people older than yourself," Grandmamma would conclude.
At first Mary had rather enjoyed the ceremoniousness with which she was treated by Lady Flower's servants, enjoyed being called Mademoiselle and having doors flung open for her and never having to get up in the middle of dinner and fetch clean plates. She felt like one of her own fairy heroines who had sprung from goose-girl to princess in a night. But all too soon grandeur began to be wearisome, and when she saw the maids disappearing into what Lady Flower called "the lower regions" she felt that she would like to disappear too.
A warm and cosy smell sometimes penetrated "the upper regions" from the open door at the head of the staircase leading down to the kitchens, and this emphasized the frigidity above. At first Mary liked her new frocks and sashes and ribbons, but she never liked having her hair brushed and combed by Adèle. And soon she grew to dislike her new frocks, because they became associated with endless afternoons in the salon, when numbers of ladies chattered French, ladies who either smelled very strongly of scent or of being ladies and who had not that pleasant soapy aroma of Aunt Lucy. At first Mary enjoyed walking in the Parc Monceau with Grandmamma or driving with her to the Bois de Boulogne; but soon these walks and drives became tiresome, for she was continually being told to hold herself up or not to turn round and stare or to talk without shouting. In the basement at Paternoster Row she had never missed the company of other children; but here in the Parc Monceau, which was full of children, Mary began to long for playmates. She took to lingering behind Grandmamma on these walks, and when she was reproved for doing so she always made the same excuse that she had waited behind a moment to see what that little boy or that little girl was doing. Lady Flower had enough sympathy and imagination to realize that Mary was beginning to feel the need of companions, so she arranged to have a children's party for her granddaughter. But Mary did not enjoy this party at all. The little girls invited were so very well behaved. Nobody romped or did any of the jolly things children did in books. They treated Mary with grave courtesy, calling her Mademoiselle, and except that the guests were in short frocks and wore their hair down there was no difference between this party and one of Grandmamma's crowded afternoons in the salon.