Malcolm is a tittsy-pootsy man! Not as tall as I am, and thin as a rail, with a look of his knees being too near together. He must be awful in a kilt, and I am sure he shivers when the wind blows, he has that air. I don’t like kilts, unless men are big, strong, bronzed creatures who don’t seem ashamed of their bare bits. I saw some splendid specimens marching once in Edinburgh, and they swung their skirts just like the beautiful ladies in the Bois, when Mademoiselle and I went out of the Allée Mrs. Carruthers told us to try always to walk in.
Lady Katherine talked a great deal at dinner about politics, and her different charities, and the four girls were so respectful and interested, but Mr. Montgomerie contradicted her whenever he could. I was glad when we went into the drawing-room.
That first evening was the worst of all, because we were all so strange; one seems to get acclimatized to whatever it is after a while.
Lady Katherine asked me if I had not some fancy work to do. Kirstie had begun her ties, and Jean the altar-cloth again.
“Do let Maggie run to your room and fetch it for you,” she said.
I was obliged to tell her I never did any. “But I—I can trim hats,” I said. It really seemed so awful not to be able to do anything like them, I felt I must say this as a kind of defence for myself.
However, she seemed to think that hardly a lady’s employment.
“How clever of you!” Kirstie exclaimed. “I wish I could; but don’t you find that intermittent? You can’t trim them all the time. Don’t you feel the want of a constant employment?”
I was obliged to say I had not felt like that yet, but I could not tell them I particularly loved sitting perfectly still, doing nothing.
Jessie and Maggie played Patience at two tables which folded up, and which they brought out, and sat down to with a deliberate accustomed look, which made me know at once they did this every night, and that I should see those tables planted exactly on those two spots of carpet each evening during my whole stay. I suppose it is because they cannot bring the poker work and the bookbinding into the drawing-room.