With the boys she got on very well. At first they laughed at her; then Clement became polite, and even learned to speak French with her after a fashion. Jack was not only ignorant of French, but his English was so mixed with school-boy idioms, that Madame and he seldom got through a conversation without wonderful complications, from which, however, Jack’s expressive countenance and ready wit generally delivered them in the long run. I do not know whether, on the whole, Madame did not like Mr. Arkwright best of all. Le bon pasteur, as she styled him.
“The Furrin Lady,” as she was called in the village, was very fond of looking into the cottages, and studying the ways of the country generally.
I never shall forget the occurrence of the yearly village fair or feast during her visit: her anxiety to be present—her remarkable costume on the occasion—and the strong conviction borne in upon Eleanor and me that the Fat Lady in the centre booth was quite a secondary attraction to the Furrin Lady between us, with the raw lads and stolid farmers who had come down from the hills, with their wise sheep-dogs at their heels. If they stared at her, however, Madame was not unobservant of them, and the critical power was on her side.
“These men and their dogs seem to me alike,” said she. “Both of them—they stare so much and say so little. But the looks of the dogs are altogether the more spirituels,” she added.
I should not like to record all that she said on the subject of our village feast. It was not complimentary, and to some extent the bitter general observations on our national amusements into which her disappointment betrayed her were justified by facts. But it was not our fault that, in translating village feast into fête de village, she had allowed her imagination to mislead her with false hopes. She had expected a maypole, a dance of peasants, gay dresses, smiling faces, songs, fruit, coffee, flowers, and tasteful but cheap wares of small kinds in picturesque booths. She had adorned herself, and Eleanor and me, with collars and cuffs of elaborate make and exquisite “get-up” by her own hands. She wore a pale pink and a dead scarlet geranium, together with a spray of wistaria leaf, in admirable taste, on her dark dress. Her hat was marvellous; her gloves were perfect. She had a few shillings in her pocket to purchase souvenirs for the household; her face beamed in anticipation of a day of simple, sociable, uncostly pleasure, such as we English are so lamentably ignorant of. But I think the only English thing she had prepared herself to expect was what she called “The Briteesh hooray.”
Dirt, clamour, oyster-shells, ginger-beer bottles, stolid curiosity, beery satisfaction, careworn stall-keepers with babies-in-arms and strange trust about their wares and honesty over change; giddy-go-rounds, photograph booths, marionettes, the fat woman, the double-headed monstrosity, and the teeming beer-houses——
Poor Madame! The contrast was terrible. She would not enter a booth. She turned homewards in a rage of vexation, and shut herself up in her bedroom (I suspect with tears of annoyance and disappointment), whilst Eleanor and I went back into the feast, and were photographed with dear boys and Clement.
Clement was getting towards an age when clever youngsters are not unapt to exercise their talents in depreciating home surroundings. He said that it was no wonder that Madame was disgusted, and scolded us for taking her into the feast. Jack took quite a different view of the matter.
“The feast’s very good fun in its way,” said he; “and Madame only wants tackling. I’ll tackle her.”
“Nonsense!” said Clement.