“It makes no difference to me what you wear!” said Bridgie quietly, and at that Esmeralda laughed, and became herself once more.
“It does to me, though. The best of everything is good enough for me, nothing less! You dear old thing, it’s like old times to have you looking at me with that solemn face. No one keeps me in order now. Geoff tries occasionally, but it’s such an evident effort that it doesn’t have much effect. It will be quite good for me to have some family snubbings once more. This is the way to the nursery—this door! Now, my beauty, come to mother. She’s brought two new aunties to see you!”
The beauty regarded his relations in stolid silence for a moment, then hung his lower lip and began to howl. His mother walked him up and down the room, striving by various blandishments to win him back to smiles, but he kept turning his head over his shoulder to gaze at his new relatives with an expression of agonised incredulity, as though loath to believe that such monsters could really exist on the earth. He was very fat and very bald, and, if the truth were told, not a beauty at all, but Esmeralda made a fascinating mother, and was so happily deluded about his charms that it would have been cruel to undeceive her.
Even Pixie managed for once to preserve a discreet silence, while Bridgie’s ejaculations of astonishment at size and weight passed muster as admiration with the complacent mother and nurse.
“You shall see him again later on,” Esmeralda announced, as though anxious to soften the pain of separation, as she led her sisters from the room. “I must show you over the house before lunch. Geoffrey had the drawing-rooms redecorated before we were married, but this is the first time I have been able to entertain. I wish you could come and stay here, Bridgie, but I suppose nothing would make you desert the boys. Never mind, you will be here every time that there is anything going on, and it is not much fun preparing when one has a houseful of servants. Do you remember how we used to be making jellies and creams all the day before, and running about arranging the house until a few minutes before the time when the people arrived? That’s all over now, and I do nothing but give orders and grumble. This way! There! What do you think of that for an imposing vista?”
It was indeed very imposing, for one long yellow room opened into another decorated in palest blue, which in its turn showed a glimpse of a conservatory gay with flowers.
The rooms were so huge, so lofty in stature, that Pixie was puzzled to understand how the unimposing exterior could contain such surprises, while Esmeralda strutted about displaying one treasure after another, giving detailed descriptions of exactly how the rooms were to be arranged for the contemplated entertainments, and glancing complacently at her own reflection in the long mirrors. She looked ridiculously young to be the mistress of this fine establishment, and despite occasional affectations, there was more of the schoolgirl than of the woman of the world, in her happy voice and eager gestures.
From the reception-rooms the sisters adjourned to the dining-room, a big, somewhat gloomy apartment facing the street, very handsome, very severe, and evidently dedicated to one purpose only, and never by any chance entered from the time one meal ended until another began. The butler was arranging dishes on the sideboard, the table was spread with a glittering profusion of glass and silver, and an array of cold dainties, at sight of which Bridgie blushed, and stared at the floor. She waited, trembling, to hear Pixie’s exclamation, but none came, and as they adjourned towards the library she slipped her hand through Esmeralda’s arm, and said, half laughing, half nervous—
“I don’t understand the ways of grand ladies yet, Joan dear! I shall have to get into them by degrees. You wrote that you were coming to open the house, and I imagined you in the same sort of confusion which we were in at Rutland Road, only of course ten times worse, as your house is so big. We thought you would be tired and hungry, and perhaps have nothing to eat but sandwiches or biscuits, and we—we brought some lunch for you and ourselves!”
Esmeralda threw back her head and laughed with much enjoyment.