It was a horrible interval waiting for the other guests to come and support me. I made a vow there and then that I would never again present myself wherever I might be invited out until a full hour beyond the specified time—and I’ve generally kept it, too!
Min did not treat me cavalierly, however, notwithstanding that I had arrived in advance of expectation. She was all kindness and grace, endeavouring to make the “mauvais quart d’heure” of my solitary guesthood pass away as little uncomfortably to me as possible.
She asked me to come and see her flowers in the bay window of the drawing-room, which she had fitted up as a tiny conservatory; while her mother sat down to the piano and played dreamy music in a desultory fashion. I like dreamy music, although it always makes me melancholy—indeed, all music affects me the same way, in spite of my not being by any means what you would call a sad person. On the contrary, I am supposed to be one of the most light-hearted fellows imaginable, and, certainly, laugh more than I ever cry. However, mirth and sadness are closer allies than people generally suspect. All emotion proceeds, more or less, from hysteria.
While Mrs Clyde was playing, Min and I got talking. She thanked me for coming early; and upbraided the absent guests for thinking it fashionable to come later than bidden.
We discussed the rival merits of a scarlet japonica and a double fuchsia, giving the palm of merit to the former, though the latter had some wondrous lobes; and I was also asked my opinion whether her favourite maidenhair fern would survive a sudden and unaccountable blight which had fallen upon it a few days before.
She then showed me the identical violets I had given her that Christmas morning, now so long passed by: she had tipped the stalks with sealing wax and preserved them in cotton wool, so that they looked as fresh as when first gathered.
“There!” she said, with an air of triumph. “There, Mr Lorton! I have kept them ever since.”
“Mr Lorton!” I repeated, “who is he? I don’t know him.”
“Well, ‘Frank,’ then—will that please you better, you tiresome thing?”
“You know you promised,” I said, apologetically.