When Jane at last came back, Evelyn looked up and spoke. “Really,” she said, “you must excuse me. . . . I didn’t mean to neglect you, but I had to get through my mail; you know how it is, of course. . . . Do you want to brush up before you eat? Frightful of me to forget to ask you.”
I said all I wanted was to eat, and then Jane said, “This way, please,” and I followed, sort of tiptoeing because everything seemed so very grand, and it all made me seem even shabbier than I was.
The dining-room is all panelled in some sort of dark wood, and has beautifully upholstered dark furniture in it. Silver gleamed from a long sideboard, which hasn’t one mirror in it (they all have mirrors on them in Queensburg), and a Jap served things. I liked him; he smiled at me.
There were roses and lilies of the valley in a great silver bowl which stood in the centre of the table, and I liked those better than anything. And when I looked at them my eyes filled. And I guess the Jap man saw it, for he took out a rose and several sprays of lilies of the valley and laid them by my place and said, “Like flowers. . . . Always pretty,” and I said: “Can I really have them?” And he smiled at me again.
And then he got food, and gave me the right fork, after I had used up the wrong one on the wrong thing to eat it with, which is mixed, but as I said, gym. work is where I do well.
After I had got through, and the Jap had given me a bowl of water with a flower floating in it (it confused me then) and was asking me whether I wanted coffee here or in the drawing-room, Amy, my cousin who is nearest my age, came in.
“My dear,” she said, “I simply hated not being here to receive you, but it was my dancing-class afternoon, and afterward I went to dinner with a friend. I couldn’t in decency refuse her. I hope your trip was pleasant? . . . Do let us go in where we can talk comfortably. . . . (Ito, coffee in the drawing-room, please.) Mother isn’t in, is she? . . . Poor mother, so rushed! . . . But everyone is. We love having you, Natalie!” And then she slid her arm through mine and squeezed my hand. And I loved her from that minute on. For--although we are very different, and she sometimes seems affected to me, she is kind. And you can overlook anything if people are that.
Evelyn is not. When you humiliate her, she hurts you to pay it back. I know that. . . . After the first half-hour of Evelyn, I learned my first big lesson from New York. And that wasn’t calling dinner supper; it was that kindness and making other people feel happy is the most important thing in life, and the thing that counts most truly and deeply. I try hard not to err in this now, for I know how it feels to have people do it.
When we reached the drawing-room, we found Evelyn had left. She is twenty-one and “out,” and she goes to parties a great deal. Amy sat talking about her and her beaux (she didn’t call them that), and her engagements, and I sat trying to look as if I cared a great deal about what Amy said, but thinking of Uncle Frank, Bradly-dear, and of Willy Jepson. That night I was quite sure that Willy Jepson would have a wife before he was eighteen! But he didn’t. However, that comes later.
At about ten Amy asked whether I’d like to go to bed, and I admitted that I was tired, and so she showed me to the most beautiful little room near hers, with a bathroom which she and Evelyn and I were to use.