In the Mountains

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

'I don't want to see any more Thackerays and Trollopes,' murmured Mrs. Jewks. 'I've seen them. Now I want to see something different.'

This sentence was too long for Mrs. Barnes not to notice, and she looked at me as one who should say, 'There. What did I tell you? Her name unsettles her.'

There was a silence.

'Our father,' then said Mrs. Barnes, with so great a gravity of tone that for a moment I thought she was unaccountably and at eleven o'clock in the morning going to embark on the Lord's Prayer, 'knew Thackeray. He mixed with him.'

And as I wasn't quite sure whether this was a rebuke for Dolly or information for me, I kept quiet.

As, however, Mrs. Barnes didn't continue, I began to feel that perhaps I was expected to say something. So I did.

'That,' I said, 'must have been very—'

I searched round for an enthusiastic word, but couldn't find one. It is unfortunate how I can never think of any words more enthusiastic than what I am feeling. They seem to disappear; and urged by politeness, or a desire to please, I frantically hunt for them in a perfectly empty mind. The nearest approach to one that I found this morning was Enjoyable. I don't think much of Enjoyable. It is a watery word; but it was all I found, so I said it. 'That must have been very enjoyable,' I said; and even I could hear that my voice was without excitement.

Mrs. Jewks looked at me and smiled.

'It was more than enjoyable,' said Mrs. Barnes, 'it was elevating. Dolly used to feel just as I do about it,' she added, her eye reproachfully on her sister. 'It is not Thackeray's fault that she no longer does.'