Mr. Strobridge would be an invaluable teacher, but she must get up a few technical points first. She would at once ask her mistress if she might take some books from the library, up to her sitting-room for the evening. She would immediately look up the bald facts in the Encyclopedia to begin with, and then study individual volumes. Then there were the painters and the sculptors to learn about more fully, although she had often gone to the galleries and museums in London, but not with what—she now knew, after her inspection of this home where for hundreds of years the owners had been cultivated collectors—was a critical eye. She felt as if the key to understanding had only just been given to her. Even the housekeeper (not Mrs. Pepperdon of Berkeley Square, but this elderly, portly Mrs. Illingworth) knew more about the beauties that she was showing off than she did. This state of ignorance must not continue for even a week!
Permission was accorded about the books when Lady Garribardine looked into the secretary's room before her tea—and until three o'clock in the morning this indefatigable young woman kept her lights on, cramming facts into her head—and then when her work was over before lunch next day she walked again through the picture gallery and the big drawing-rooms to see if she had mastered anything. The picture gallery was filled with early and late Italian works, and some fine specimens of Spanish Renaissance as well as English portraits. She found that with even this much knowledge gained she had already grown more appreciative, but she realised that it was a question of training her eye as well as her brain.
The guests were all to arrive on Christmas Eve and a message came for Katherine that she was to come down and pour out the tea for them, because "Her Ladyship's hand was very rheumatic."
She had been extremely occupied with the dispatching of parcels of presents and various matters all the afternoon. This would be an occasion to wear the grey blouse again, and she had discovered that the becoming waves upon her brow could be achieved also by water and combing, so she would not be at the mercy of a hairdresser in the future for her improved looks!
She was seated behind the tea-table in the library when the first batch of the visitors arrived by train. Mr. Strobridge and Lady Beatrice were motoring; the three grandchildren and their attendants had come early in the afternoon.
The party consisted of the two old maiden cousins, the Misses d'Estaire by name, and a young niece of theirs, and two or three stray men, and Mrs. Delemar. Katherine attended to their wants and watched the whole scene—no one had greeted her, but whoever chanced to be near her exchanged a friendly word; Mrs. Delemar was even gracious, it was her way always to be polite to everyone.
How easy they all were! No stiffness, no self-consciousness, and one of the men was quite witty and the young Miss d'Estaire a most lively modern girl. Katherine enjoyed herself although she never spoke unless spoken to, and then returned monosyllabic answers.
When they had all been chaffing and eating quantities of muffins and buns and blackberry jam and cream for half an hour, Gerard Strobridge and his wife came in.
"We have had the most deplorable journey, Aunt Sarah," Lady Beatrice announced plaintively. "A judgment upon one for travelling with one's husband. Gerard would drive, and of course collided with a milestone, and injured one of the wheels so that the tire, which broke, took hours to put on again and I was frozen with cold."