The long, unusual leisure of the afternoon passed by her like a pleasant dream, in which, as she sat in a basket-chair under the verandah outside the drawing-room windows, illustrated papers, American magazines, the snoring lethargy of the dogs, and the warm life and stillness of the air were about equally blended. Miss Hope-Drummond lay aloof in a hammock under a horse-chestnut tree at the end of the flower-garden, working at the strip of Russian embroidery that some day was to languish neglected on the stall of an English bazaar; Francie had seen her trail forth with her arms full of cushions, and dimly divined that her fellow-guest was hardly tolerating the hours that were to her like fragments collected from all the holidays she had ever known. No wonder, she thought, that Pamela wore a brow of such serenity, when days like this were her ordinary portion. Five o’clock came, and with it, with the majestic punctuality of a heavenly body, came Gorman and the tea equipage, attended by his satellite, William, bearing the tea-table. Francie had never heard the word idyllic, but the feeling that it generally conveys came to her as she lay back in her chair, and saw the roses swaying about the pillars of the verandah, and watched the clots of cream sliding into her cup over the broad lip of the cream jug, and thought how incredibly brilliant the silver was, and that Miss Dysart’s hands looked awfully pretty while she was pouring out tea, and weren’t a bit spoiled by being rather brown. It was consolatory that Miss Hope-Drummond had elected to have her tea conveyed to her in the hammock; it was too much trouble to get out of it, she called, in her shrill, languid voice, and no one had argued the matter with her. Lady Dysart, who had occupied herself during the afternoon in visiting the garden-beds and giving a species of clinical lecture on each to the wholly unimpressed gardener, had subsided into a chair beside Francie, and began to discuss with her the evangelical preachers of Dublin, a mark of confidence and esteem which Pamela noticed with astonishment. Francie had got to her second cup of tea, and had evinced an edifying familiarity with Lady Dysart’s most chosen divines, when the dogs, who had been seated opposite Pamela, following with lambent eyes the passage of each morsel to her lips, rushed from the verandah, and charged with furious barkings across the garden and down the lawn towards two figures, whom in their hearts they knew to be the sons of the house, but whom, for histrionic purposes, they affected to regard as dangerous strangers.
Miss Hope-Drummond sat up in her hammock and pinned her hat on straight.
“Mr. Dysart,” she called, as Christopher and Garry neared her chestnut tree, “you’ve just come in time to get me another cup of tea.”
Christopher dived under the chestnut branches, and presently, with what Miss Hope-Drummond felt to be unexampled stupidity, returned with it, but without his own. He had even the gaucherie to commend her choice of the hammock, and having done so, to turn and walk back to the verandah, and Miss Hope-Drummond asked herself for the hundredth time how the Castlemores could have put up with him.
“I met the soldiers out on the lake to-day,” Christopher remarked as he sat down; “I told them to come and dine to-morrow.” He looked at Pamela with an eye that challenged her gratitude, but before she could reply, Garry interposed in tones muffled by cake.
“He did, the beast; and he might have remembered it was my birthday, and the charades and everything.”
“Oh, Garry, must we have charades?” said Pamela lamentably.
“Well, of course we must, you fool,” returned Garry with Scriptural directness; “I’ve told all the men about the place, and Kitty Gascogne’s coming to act, and James Canavan’s going to put papa to bed early and help us—’ Garry’s voice sank to the fluent complaining undertone that distinguishes a small boy with a grievance, and Christopher turned to his mother’s guest.
“I suppose you’ve acted in charades, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Is it me act? Oh goodness, no, Mr. Dysart! I never did such a thing but once, when I had to read Lady Macbeth’s part at school, and I thought I’d died laughing the whole time.”