“I can see you didn’t have a good night,” said Claudia solicitously.
“No, I got the jim-jams a bit. How sweet you look in that frock; and yet, really, it’s awfully plain, isn’t it? Hardly anything on it except the lace collar. It’s only really handsome people who can wear them plain things. I always have—had to have—lots of fluff.... I say, is it true you’re going back to town next week?”
“Yes. My husband is so much better that he hopes to get back to his chambers again.”
“Crikey! whatever will I do? I wish you could have stopped here.”
What a little face it was now under the big white chiffon hat that Madame Rose had sent her as suitable for the country; her idea of country being apparently drawn from the “sets” at the halls.
“I’ll come down quite often, dear. Then you think of stopping on here?” It had only been started for the summer months.
“Well, it’s perfectly amazing what a lot of people want a holiday—no bunkum either; and somehow”—she looked round the neglected old garden; it had only been superficially tidied up, but it was full of flowers—“I don’t want to leave here, now I’ve come. It’s awful sweet, isn’t it? I used to think I hated the country and that it was beastly slow and tame, but I like to smell the flowers—different somehow to those you have in vases—and I like to see the birds jigging about so mighty busy over nothing. Wouldn’t my old pals laugh at me! Fancy me watching the birds! The only bird I ever thought of was the one the gallery gives you sometimes. Not that the boys ever gave me the bird. Once I had a little trouble with some young fool that started to hiss in the middle of my song. It made me that mad! I stopped right dead and I looked up and said, ‘Well, come down here, my boy, and sing something better.’ Ah, I got him! They started clapping me till you couldn’t hear yourself speak. Ah, well!”
Claudia laid her hand on her sister-in-law’s, but Fay was quite cheerful again when she spoke.
“And I think I’d like to be buried in the country; it’s so clean and nice. Such a lot of smuts in town. Ever been in Kensal Green? My mother’s there. They subscribed and bought her a grave. But I can’t stand Kensal Green; gives you the bloomingest of humps. No, I’d like a nice, clean tombstone with bits of ivy and things. It would be such a trouble to bring me down from town.... I don’t feel I want to be moved much more, only from the house to the garden while it’s summer.”
A rush of tears blinded Claudia, for Fay said it in such a natural, unaffected way that it was inexpressibly pathetic.