“I must beg Cornelia to put things back in their proper places!” said Miss Briskett a third time as she crossed the hall to the dining-room. This room also was empty, but even as she grasped the fact, Miss Briskett started with dismay to behold a bareheaded figure leaning over the garden gate, elbows propped on the topmost bar, and chin supported on clasped hands. This time she did not pause to determine what commands she should issue in the future, but stepped hastily down the path to take immediate and peremptory measures.
“My dear! in the front garden—without a hat—leaning over the gate! What can you be thinking of? The neighbours might see you!”
Cornelia turned in lazy amusement. “Well, if it’s going to be a shock to them, they might as well begin early, and get it over.” She ran a surprised eye over her aunt’s severe attire. “My, Aunt Soph, you look too good to live! I’m ’most frightened of you in that bonnet. If you’d given a hoot from the window I’d have hustled up, and not kept you waiting. Just hang on two shakes while I get my hat. I won’t stay to prink!”
“I am not accustomed—” began Miss Briskett, automatically, but she spoke to thin air. Cornelia had flown up the path in a cloud of swirling skirts; cries of “Mury! Mury!” sounded from within, and the mistress of the house slowly retraced her steps and seated herself to await the next appearance of the whirlwind with what patience she could command.
It was long in coming. The clock ticked a slow quarter of an hour, and was approaching twenty minutes, when footsteps sounded once more, and Cornelia appeared in the doorway. She had not changed her dress, she had not donned her jacket; her long, white gloves dangled from her hand; to judge from appearances she had spent a solid twenty minutes in putting on a tip-tilted hat which had been trimmed with bows of dainty flowered ribbon, on the principle of the more the merrier. Miss Briskett disapproved of the hat. It dipped over the forehead, giving an obviously artificial air of demureness to the features; it tilted up at the back, revealing the objectionable hair in all its wanton profusion. It looked—odd, and if there was one thing more than another to which Norton objected, it was a garment which differentiated itself from its fellows.
Aunt and niece walked down the path together in the direction of the South Lodge, the latter putting innumerable questions, to which the former replied in shocked surprise. “What were those gardens across the road?”—They were private property of householders in the Park.—“Did they have fine jinks over there in summer time?”—The householders in the park never, under any circumstances, indulged in “jinks.” They disapproved thoroughly, and on principle, of anything connected with jinks!—“Think of that now—the poor, deluded creatures! What did they use the gardens for, anyway?”—The gardens were used for an occasional promenade; and were also valuable as forming a screen between the Park and the houses on the Western Road.—“What was wrong with the houses on the Western Road?”—There was nothing wrong with the houses in question. The residents in the Park objected to see, or to be seen by, any houses, however desirable. They wished to ensure for themselves an unbroken and uninterrupted privacy.—“My gracious!”
Mrs Phipps, the dragon of the South Lodge, came out to the doorstep, and bobbed respectfully as Miss Briskett passed by, but curiosity was rampant upon her features. Cornelia smiled radiantly upon her; she smiled upon everyone she met, and threw bright, curious glances to right and to left.
“My! isn’t it green? My! isn’t it still? Where is everyone, anyway? Have they got a funeral in every house? Seems kind of unsociable, muffling themselves up behind these hedgerows! Over with us, if we’ve got a good thing, we’re not so eager to hide it away. You can walk along the sidewalk and see everything that’s going on. In the towns the families camp out on the doorsteps. It’s real lively and sociable. ... Are these your stores? They look as if they’d been made in the year one.”
They were, in truth, a quaint little row—butcher, grocer, greengrocer, and linen-draper, all nestled into a little angle between two long, outstanding buildings, which seemed threatening at every moment to fall down and crush them to atoms. The windows were small, and the space inside decidedly limited, and this morning there was an unusual rush of customers. It seemed as if every housewife in the neighbourhood had sallied forth to make her purchases at the exact hour when Miss Briskett was known to do her daily shopping. At the grocer’s counter Cornelia was introduced to Mrs Beaumont, of The Croft.
“My niece, Miss Cornelia Briskett. Mrs Beaumont,” murmured Miss Briskett.