If Hadria met Professor Theobald in her rambles, she always cut short her intended walk. She and Valeria with Professor Fortescue wandered together, far and wide. They watched the daily budding greenery, the gleams of daffodils among their sword-blades of leaves, the pushing of sheaths and heads through the teeming soil, the bursts of sunshine and the absurd childish little gushes of rain, skimming the green country like a frown.
“Truly a time for joy and idleness.”
“If only,” said Hadria, when Professor Theobald thus grew enthusiastic on the subject, “if only my cook had not given a month’s notice.”
She would not second his mood, be it what it might. Each day, as they passed along the lanes, the pale green had spread, like fire, on the hedges, caught the chestnuts, with their fat buds shining in the sun, which already was releasing the close-packed leaflets.
Hadria (apparently out of sheer devilry, said Professor Theobald) kept up a running commentary on the season, and on her hapless position, bound to be off on the chase for a cook at this moment of festival. Nor was this all. Crockery, pots and pans, clothes for the children, clothes for herself, were urgently needed, and no experienced person, she declared, could afford to regard the matter as simple because it was trivial.
“One of the ghastliest mistakes in this trivial and laborious world.”
Valeria thought that cooks had simply to be advertised for, and they came.
“What naïveté!” exclaimed Hadria. “Helen was persuaded to cross the seas from her Spartan home to set Troy ablaze, and tarnish her fair fame, but it would take twenty sons of Priam to induce a damsel to come over dry land to Craddock Dene, to cook our dinners and retain her character.”
“You would almost imply that women don’t so very much care about their characters,” said Valeria.
“Oh, they do! but sometimes the dulness that an intelligent society has ordained as the classic accompaniment to social smiles, gets the better of a select few—Helen par exemple.”