I need not have done so, for when it arrived, as it did the next morning, it was even more complete than we had known. It was enveloped in a huge waterproof cover, looking like a miniature van or waggon, as the gardener, sent with it, slowly pushed it along! And he explained that, for eight months or so of the year, it would be quite safe outside. For there were also rollers—I don't know exactly what to call them—strips of wood you could roll it on to, to keep the wheels from the damp of the ground, if it was damp, though, as the man said, when he had told us all this and shown us how to slide the wheels into the grooves, 'it's really never for to say damp or wet in the pine woods. If it was wheeled into a good sheltered place, I'd undertake to say it'd be safer and drier than inside most coach-houses or stables.'
He was an Eastercove man, I should explain, and of course he thought there was no place in the world to compare with it!
There was another addition to the belongings of the chair, which we had not known of, and that was a hot water tin which fitted into the footstool, in the same neat, compact way which everything belonging to it did. Really a very good thing, for of course any one sitting still out-of-doors may get cold feet, even though it is not winter or wintry weather.
Geordie stood with his hands in his pockets admiring it all, without a fault to find; not that he wanted to find one, I feel sure. He was in a much cheerier humour this morning, and perhaps he was feeling a little sorry for having wet-blanketed my pleasure at all, the night before.
Mamma called us all away from our new toy at last. Geordie had to set off to Mr. Lloyd's, and for me, alas! it was one of the days on which I had to act governess to the little ones. I did not mind Denzil so much, though he was—I don't mind if he sees this—I am afraid I must say he still is, very slow at lessons.
But he cannot help it, not altogether, anyway, and I do think he generally does his best, and when you know that of any one, you can be much less particular with them, can't you? Besides, once he has 'taken in' anything thoroughly, he does not forget it, which is a great comfort to a teacher.
It was Esmé who tried me the most. Such a flibbertigibbet (that is one of Hoskins's queer words, and mamma does not like me to use them much, but it is so expressive) you never saw. If you got her to give her attention, or thought you had, and were feeling quite pleased and even proud of it, as she sat there with her bright eyes fixed on the map, we'll say, while you were pointing but how big Russia was, and how tiny England seemed with the sea all round it, all of a sudden she would say something like this—
'Ida, did you see that girl just in front of the school-children in church?' (Geography, I think, came on a Monday morning.) 'I couldn't make out if the ribbon on her hat was green or blue, or both shaded together.'
And then if I scolded her and begged her to think of her lessons and not of people's hats in church, she would explain in the funniest way, that thinking of the sea, which sometimes looks blue and sometimes green, and sometimes you don't know which, had made her remember how puzzled she had been about the girl's hat.
Upon which Denzil must come in with his remark, very wise and proper of course—