"I don't see how," said H.O. "I do wish Father would jolly well learn to leave my boots alone."
"It might be worse, I tell you," said Dicky. "Suppose instead of telling us to keep out of doors it had been the other way?"
"Yes," said Alice, "suppose it had been, 'Poor Mrs. Bax requires to be cheered up. Do not leave her side day or night. Take it in turns to make jokes for her. Let not a moment pass without some merry jest'? Oh yes, it might be much, much worse."
"Being able to get out all day makes it all right about trying to make that two pounds increase and multiply," remarked Oswald. "Now who's going to meet her at the station? Because after all it's her sister's house, and we've got to be polite to visitors even if we're in a house we aren't related to."
This was seen to be so, but no one was keen on going to the station. At last Oswald, ever ready for forlorn hopes, consented to go.
We told Mrs. Beale, and she got the best room ready, scrubbing everything till it smelt deliciously of wet wood and mottled soap. And then we decorated the room as well as we could.
"She'll want some pretty things," said Alice, "coming from the land of parrots and opossums and gum-trees and things."
We did think of borrowing the stuffed wild-cat that is in the bar at the "Ship," but we decided that our decorations must be very quiet—and the wild-cat, even in its stuffed state, was anything but; so we borrowed a stuffed roach in a glass box and stood it on the chest of drawers. It looked very calm. Sea-shells are quiet things when they are vacant, and Mrs. Beale let us have the four big ones off her chiffonnier.
The girls got flowers—bluebells and white wood-anemones. We might have had poppies or buttercups, but we thought the colours might be too loud. We took some books up for Mrs. Bax to read in the night. And we took the quietest ones we could find.
"Sonnets on Sleep," "Confessions of an Opium Eater," "Twilight of the Gods," "Diary of a Dreamer," and "By Still Waters," were some of them. The girls covered them with grey paper, because some of the bindings were rather gay.