Presently the door opened and a lovely creature came in. The butler looked round the room and said: “Mrs. County will be down directly, ma’am.” She was just like Mrs. County, except that all her features turned a little down instead of a little up. Even her eyelids were nearly closed, whereas Mrs. County’s are nearly always turned up, with an appealing expression, as though she were about to join the angels but was too tired to make the first move.
I find it so difficult to observe by-laws, such as ignoring people unless one knows them. I should have chatted to this weary Wilhelmina if I had thought that there was a chance of her answering, but I had an instinct that she would partially raise one eyelid at me and pretend to be either a dying empress or a virtuous barmaid accosted in Piccadilly under a misapprehension. I therefore looked down my nose too, and said nothing.
Mrs. County, of course, introduced us when she came down. The other one’s name was really Mrs. Smith, and that in itself is disguise enough, so I need not invent one for her. She had a deep, rich voice, full of good food and the health which comes from taking plenty of exercise, and letting every one else do everything except what every one wants to do. That you make haste to do yourself, with carefully concealed greed.
They were very entertaining. First they licked one another all over—“Darling, such a lovely hat! m’m—m’m. You do always manage to get hold of such wonderful things!” Then one or other got a little playful pat on the ear—“Yours, darling; he never was mine; nothing to do with me. I’m absolutely out of it.” Then a swift retreat—“Lola ought to be more careful, shouldn’t she? I mean, it’s too pitiful running after any one like that!”
We went in to lunch, and they purred together over the good food. Now and then they left for a moment their absorbing occupation of the preliminaries of battle while they took a detour round me. They had to do this for the sake of politeness, but they were both quite pleased to prolong their delights by a little diversion in between. Mrs. County brought Mrs. Merchant’s name in her mouth, and laid it before us as a morsel to worry. Being, more or less, in charge of it for the moment, I was able to slip it into my pocket and substitute a mixed variety of their Millport acquaintances. All of these they pretended to know in the slightest possible degree, they having now crossed the Rubicon between Millport and the County, and burned their sauce-boats (you know, don’t you, that this is the great ketchup country? You pass whole fields of it when you come through by train).
“Funny little place, Millport, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Smith. “I never could stand it when I was there. We’re having a party of natives next week; will you come, Rita, and help? I shan’t know what to do with them.”
“What sort of natives?” asked Mrs. County.
“Oh, you know the freaks Sam collects in Millport. He says we should not have any money if we weren’t civil to them.”
“It gives one such an insight into what the King and Queen must feel at Drawing-rooms, doesn’t it?” I suggested.