CHAPTER IV
A DAY ON THE DOWNS
"A son to clasp my finger tight."—NORMAN GALE.
When we had been in Spain for nearly a year, there was some dispute about the business arrangements of Willie's partnership in his uncle's bank, and Willie withdrew altogether from the affair. We then decided to return to England. Though glad to go home, I parted from my Spanish relations with regret, and have always since my visit to them thought that the admixture of Irish and Spanish blood is most charming in its result.
On our return to England we lived in Clarges Street, London, for some time, while Willie was looking for a place in the country where he could start a stud farm. Willie was very fond of horses, and understood them well, and I was delighted at the idea of his getting some really good brood mares and breeding race-horses. We knew, of course, nothing of the enormous expense and many losses such an undertaking was certain to entail.
At last we decided to take Bennington Park, Hertfordshire, and on going there Willie bought some good blood stock, among the pick of which were Alice Maud, Scent, and Apricot. Soon we had all the boxes tenanted, and I spent many happy hours petting the lovely thoroughbred mares with their small velvety noses and intelligent eyes.
The chief form of social intercourse in the county was the giving of long, heavy, and most boring dinners. People thought nothing of driving eight or even ten miles (and there were no motor-cars then) to eat their dinner in each other's houses, and this form of entertainment used to produce such an absolutely painful boredom in me that I frequently hid the invitations from Willie, who wished to "keep up with the county."
Willie and I were a good-looking young couple, and people liked to have us about. Willie, too, was a good conversationalist, and had a ready wit that made him welcome, since an Irishman and wit are synonymous to the conventional mind. That his witticisms pertained rather to the France of his education than the Ireland of his birth was unrecognized because unexpected.
I was—rather, I fear, to Willie's annoyance—labelled "delightfully unusual" soon after our going to Bennington, the cause being that I received my guests one evening with my then abundant hair hanging loosely to below my waist, twisted through with a wide blue ribbon. To Willie's scandalized glance I replied with a hasty whisper, "The very latest from Paris," and was rewarded with the mollified though puzzled expression very properly awarded by all men to the "latest fashion" of their womenkind.