We had not wanted any "little tame dressmaker" at the time, but we were enchanted now, when Bettina turned up the card inscribed:
"MADAME AURORE,
"87, Crutchley Street,
"Leicester Square."
"Madame Aurore!" my mother echoed. "No doubt a cockney of the cockneys!"
She was not a cockney. And she was a great surprise.
CHAPTER XXII
PLANTING THYME
The morning she came was the morning Eric said good-bye "just for a few days," he dreaming, as little as we, of what those few days were to bring.
And so, ignorant of what I was facing, I was almost happy in spite of the parting, because of what Eric said to me that last Monday morning.
The cart had been ordered to go for Madame Aurore at 9:42. Directly after breakfast my mother and Bettina set about trimming hats—a business in which they scorned my help. I had something particular to finish in the garden. I went on digging up the bare patches on the south bank, sharing the delight of all things growing and blowing and flying under the glorious cloud-piled sky of May. I listened intently, as I worked, to that orchestra of tiny sound underneath the loud birds' singing. The spring, unlike last year's, had been cold and late; many days like this—with crisp air and fitful sunshine. Only here, in the sheltered south-west corner, were the bees in any number tuning up their fiddles.
I looked up from my work and saw—at that most unusual hour—Eric Annan at the gate! I saw, too, that he looked odd—excited. I dropped the garden-fork. "What is the matter?" I said.