“It isn’t as if we ever saw a man down here,” they said, “especially since the war. There’s only Martyn Ambrey, who’s hardly grown-up, even.”
“If only Alfred had friends!” groaned Dolly. “I’m sure Mumma has told him often enough to bring any of his friends down, whenever he likes, but he never does.”
“Poor old thing, struggling along in an office all the time! I don’t believe he has any friends,” said Amy, pessimistically.
The Kendals are not given to illusions. They know well that Alfred is stolidly unattractive, unenterprising, and quite unlikely to provide himself or his sisters with interesting friends. And yet, in their matter-of-fact way, Blanche and Amy and Dolly and Aileen all vehemently desire that “something should happen” at Dheera Dhoon, and the only happenings to which they have ever been taught to look are matrimonial ones of the most orthodox kind.
“Girls,” I can imagine Mrs. Kendal saying to them in her direct way, “I think two of you might very well walk down to Nancy Fazackerly’s and find out something about this paying guest who’s coming to stay with her. We must have some tennis, later on. Ask her if she’d care to bring him up one afternoon.”
“Which afternoon, mumma?”
“Whichever afternoon she likes. Find out when he’s coming. I think it’s next week. I was thinking of having a tennis party one day before the end of the month.”
I am sure that Dolly and Aileen forthwith put on their hats—on the backs of their heads—slung woolen sports coats of dingy gray, and sickly green, respectively, across their shoulders, and walked to Loman Cottage; and that they did not talk to each other on the way. Unlike the Ambreys, the Kendals seldom have anything to talk to one another about. Abstract discussion does not interest them in the least, and they confine their remarks to small and obvious comments upon things that they can see.
“Two cart horses,” Aileen might say when they were exactly abreast with the gate over which the two cart horses could plainly be seen. And a quarter of a mile farther on Dolly might perhaps remark:
“The stream’s pretty full. That’s all the rain we had last week, I suppose.”