Ruby put her head on one side and looked.
“Yes, quite right,” she said. “I wish you wouldn’t always be right. Nobody else would have thought of having nothing there.”
“Because people don’t see the value of empty places,” said she. “They want to fill everything up—the walls, the fireplaces, the hours, everything. Oh, think of the unemployed! How nice it sounds! One works and subscribes and does all kinds of things for them, but if only they would be as kind, and work for the employed, so that they might be unemployed! Fancy having time to do nothing at all! That is the condition which I envy, though, of course, if it were offered me, like so many things I envy, I would not accept it, because it would mean parting with my individuality. But I would really give any sum to be able to buy a couple of hours this afternoon.”
“What for?”
“Why, to be unemployed. I want to sit in a chair and doze if I like. No, I think that would be waste; but for two hours to feel that I had nothing whatever to do. Who was it—Queen Elizabeth, I think—who said she wanted to be a milkmaid? Don’t you understand? I understand that enormously. I would even be a hydrangea, and stand in a pot, or be Mr. James Turner in his curator’s room, with nothing to do until it is closing time. Instead, I am supposed to belong to the leisured classes, and never have a moment. No ferns, either,” she called to the florist—“nothing at all.”
A footman was markedly waiting at her elbow to get in a word edgeways.
“The carriage is round, my lady,” he said.
Lady Thurso hastily finished an egg in aspic, with which she had begun lunch.
“Yes, my lady. It was ordered for a quarter-past two.”