“Oh! The daughter of old Ellison, and she married and went to Egypt. I always say,” Mrs. Kendal rejoined, with that emphasis which characterizes so many of her remarks, “I always say that the world is a very small place, after all. Puppa, do you hear that? This Mrs. Harter, who is put down on the program as Song is the daughter of old Ellison who married and went to Egypt, Sir Miles says. I suppose that means she’s come back from abroad.”
“Her husband is a solicitor in Cairo, I’m told,” said I.
“Oh, I see!” said Mumma, so emphatically that it seemed quite a visual achievement. “I see. We had some dear friends in India, who stopped in Cairo once on their way home, and they liked it very much. The wife, I’m sorry to say, was drowned in a boating accident there. That rather spoiled their stay.”
It seemed almost unnecessary to agree with so self-evident a probability, and only Sallie Ambrey murmured to herself, “Oh, surely not!” and then giggled inaudibly.
Then Lady Annabel Bending came in, and we all clapped, not only because she was the promoter and organizer of the concert, but because she had, as usual, so obvious an air of expecting it.
Lady Annabel cannot forget her Government House days. She occasionally alludes to her present husband as “H. E.,” and then corrects herself and says, “The Rector, I mean,” and on entering a public place, such as Church, she has a curious way of bowing her head graciously from side to side as she slowly walks to her place.
Where she is, one looks for a red carpet. Lady Annabel is a small woman, but she dresses beautifully and carries herself with great distinction. In many ways, she resembles the late Queen Victoria.
She received the applause with bows, and a slight, grave smile, and then mounted the platform and gave us a short speech, to which I confess that I did not listen very attentively. The usual Cross Loman entertainment followed. We have, for the most part, fathomed one another’s talents by this time, from the piano solo with which Miss Emma Applebee begins to the “Imitations” given by young Plumer, the butcher’s assistant.
“... With your kind permission, I will now give a rendering of a small boy reciting The Six ’Undred at ’is mother’s party.... Imitation of an ’en that ’as just laid an egg.... I will now conclude with a short sketch of my own, entitled The Baby in the ’Bus....”
“That,” said Mrs. Kendal, turning to me, “is what I call lifelike. And yet not vulgar.”