I thought, as I walked home, that Mrs. Flockson perhaps exaggerated the difficulty that parents may have in preserving all that is sweet and gracious without imposing their own individuality too much upon their children.
CHAPTER XXIII: FOREIGN TRAVEL
A superfluity of efficient females and inefficient Mrs. Muffs, combined with the slow poison of County Society, may disagree with anyone in time. I explained this to our country doctor, who is of a different variety to Dr. Smithson. He wants everything boiled, and is a great believer in the emotions.
Anyhow, we went abroad just to be out of the way of the fish, and the best people, and all the other things that annoyed me.
Packing up was a nightmare. I used to let Louise pack for me, but then I arrived at the end of my journey with a complete outfit of clothes none of which I wanted; besides such trifling mistakes as three combs—just because they happened to be on the dressing-table—and no Aspirin nor water-softener.
No one can pack for another without asking questions; neither can those who have not Mrs. Simpson’s strong head remember what they want to take so long as they are being asked. When I was thinking whether I could get my gloves cleaned by sending them in at once, and whether I had better take them myself or let Pierce leave them with a message when he called for the fish, Louise would say: “You will take your grey whipcord coat, I suppose.”
I said “No,” because it is inevitable to say “No” when anyone supposes we shall do so-and-so. Of course, when I arrived I wanted the coat, and could not remember having said anything about it.
How does Mrs. Simpson meet such a question as “How many evening dresses will you take?” Especially as they always ask just at the moment when one’s whole soul is with a missing pair of silk stockings. I undertook to pack for myself with even more disastrous results.
I could think of nothing I wanted to take until the last moment. I said to myself: “Dresses?—I must put them in last. Underclothes?—they will not be back from the wash until to-morrow. Shoes?—yes, they go in first.” I wedged my dressing-table pots and pans between my shoes and boots and then I remembered that I should want to wash next morning, so I took the pots and pans out again and wandered round the room looking for more things to pack. I collected note-paper and books, stamps and a pen-knife, and put them on a remote table while I went to write a note about stopping the newspaper. While I was doing this, Ruth asked me to come and look at something, and, by the time that was done, I felt I had broken the back of the packing business. There were only the clean clothes from the laundry to put in; and my dresses; there did not seem to be anything else.
How different from the morning of departure! Then every table in every room swarmed with things which had to go, and my box was already full of boots! By the time all the fat three-cornered things had gone in, the box shut comfortably; but there were no dresses in it and no underclothes.