I wanted to go directly from Southampton to London with the Abbotts, our ship friends, who left us yesterday. Roderick Abbott and I had had a charming time on board ship (more charming than Aunt Celia knows, because she was very ill, and her natural powers of chaperoning were severely impaired), and the prospect of seeing London sights together was not unpleasing; but Roderick Abbott is not in Aunt Celia’s itinerary, which reads: ‘Winchester, Salisbury, Bath, Wells, Gloucester, Oxford, London, Ely, Peterborough, Lincoln, York, Durham.’ These are the cathedrals Aunt Celia’s curate chose to visit, and this is the order in which he chose to visit them. Canterbury was too far east for him, and Exeter was too far west, but he suggests Ripon and Hereford if strength and time permit.
[p6]
Aunt Celia is one of those persons who are born to command, and when they are thrown in contact with those who are born to be commanded all goes as merry as a marriage bell; otherwise not.
So here we are at Winchester; and I don’t mind all the Roderick Abbotts in the universe, now that I have seen the Royal Garden Inn, its pretty coffee-room opening into the old-fashioned garden, with its borders of clove-pinks, its aviaries, and its blossoming horse-chestnuts, great towering masses of pink bloom.
Aunt Celia has driven to St. Cross Hospital with Mrs. Benedict, an estimable lady tourist whom she ‘picked up’ en route from Southampton. I am tired, and stayed at home. I cannot write letters, because Aunt Celia has the guide-books, so I sit by the window in indolent content, watching the dear little school laddies, with their short jackets and wide white [p7] collars; they all look so jolly, and rosy, and clean, and kissable. I should like to kiss the chambermaid, too. She has a pink print dress, no fringe, thank goodness (it’s curious our servants can’t leave that deformity to the upper classes), but shining brown hair, plump figure, soft voice, and a most engaging way of saying ‘Yes, miss? Anythink more, miss?’ I long to ask her to sit down comfortably and be English while I study her as a type, but of course I mustn’t. Sometimes I wish I could retire from the world for a season and do what I like, ‘surrounded by the general comfort of being thought mad.’
An elegant, irreproachable, high-minded model of dignity and reserve has just knocked and inquired what we will have for dinner. It is very embarrassing to give orders to a person who looks like a Justice of the Supreme Court, but I said languidly:
‘How would you like a clear soup, a good spring soup, to begin with, miss?’
‘Very much.’
‘And a bit of turbot next, miss, with anchovy sauce?’
‘Yes, turbot, by all means,’ I said, my mouth watering at the word.