Another ring, before the door had well closed, took Bean to it again, and Kate, saying, "It is all right, Salome, come upstairs," led the way to the room she shared with Louise, while Digby took Reginald into the dining-room.
An evening dress of blue and white lay on one of the little beds, and Kate dexterously covered it with a white shawl; for Salome's deep crape reminded her that neither she nor Louise was really wearing the proper mourning for her uncle.
"Just take the daisies out of your hats," her mother had said, "and wear your black cashmeres. It is really impossible to provide mourning for a family like this; and besides, so few people here will know much about it—so many are away; and by the time Roxburgh is full again, the six weeks' mourning for an uncle will be over. Still, as you two elder girls are seen with me, you must not be in colours; it is a fortunate thing I had just had that black silk made up."
The memory of her mother's words passed swiftly through Kate's mind, and she hoped Salome would not notice the blue dress. She need not have been afraid. Salome was fully occupied with plaiting up her hair and possessing herself of two or three stray hair-pins she saw on the dressing-table.
The room was not particularly tidy or attractive; very different to the bright sunny room at Maplestone, with its wreath of ivy round the windows and its decorations within, in which Ada delighted. The back of Edinburgh Crescent looked out on strips of dark gardens, shut in by red brick walls; and beyond, the backs of another row of houses.
"Louise and I are obliged to share a room," Kate said. "Though this house looks large, we fill it from top to bottom—we are such an enormous family. That's poor little Guy," she said, as a wailing, fretful cry was heard. "The nursery is next our room. Guy is our baby: he is very delicate, and I don't think papa has much hope that he will live. Now we must come down to luncheon. I hope you don't mind barley soup and treacle pudding. We are certain not to have anything better to-day, because mamma and Louise are out." She said this laughing as she ran down before Salome.
The long table with its row of young faces bewildered Salome. She felt shy and uncomfortable, and Aunt Betha, rising from her place at the head of the table, advanced kindly toward her.
"Come and sit next me, my dear. There are so many cousins; don't attempt to speak to them all. Will you have some hashed mutton or cold beef?—Go on with your dinners, Edith and Maude"—for the little girls had stopped short in eating to gaze curiously at their cousin. "Do you take beer, my dear? Only water! that is right. We are all better for taking water.—Now, Digby, send down the potatoes.—We wait on ourselves at luncheon. I hope you find your lodgings comfortable. Mrs. Pryor is a very superior person, rather gloomy, but Ruth laughs enough for a dozen. A giddy girl she was when she lived here.—You remember Ruth, Kate?"
"No, I don't," said Kate; "we have a tide of girls passing through the house. They are all alike."
Aunt Betha's kindly chatter was a great help to Salome, and she began to feel less oppressed by the presence of her cousins. Such an army of boys and girls it seemed to her! and the home picture so widely different to that which she had known at Maplestone. "Children's dinner," with neither father nor mother present, at Dr. Wilton's was of the plainest, and Mrs. Wilton expended her ornamental taste on her drawing-room, where she had many afternoon teas and "at homes." Dinner parties or even luncheon parties were rare, and the dining-room was therefore generally bare and commonplace in its arrangements. A dusty fern, which looked unhappy and gas-stricken, drooped rather than lived in a china pot in the middle of the table; but beyond this there were no signs of flower or of leaf.