CHAPTER V
THE DEVENTER GIRLS
I suppose this is as good a place as any to bring in and explain the daughters of the house of Deventer. I had known them ever since I could remember. First as "kids" to be properly despised, then as long-legged, short-skirted, undistinguishable entities, useful at fielding, but remarkably bad at throwing in to the wicket.
During our long stay at the lycée these creatures had been at schools of their own. Their hair had gradually darkened and lengthened, so that it could be more easily tugged. It had been gathered up and arranged about their heads at a period which synchronised with the lengthening of their skirts, and the complete retirement of the ankles which had once been so freely whacked with hockey sticks and even (I regret to say) kicked at football practice.
There was no great difference in age between the girls. They might have been triplets, but denied the accusation fiercely and unanimously, with more of personal feeling than seemed necessary. Often as court of last appeal the arbitration of their mother had to be referred to. In her gentle cooing voice she would give the names of the various medical men who had ushered them into the world. These were settled in various mineralogical centres.
"There was Doctor Laidlaw of Coatbridge. He was Rhoda Polly's. A fine sharp man was Doctor Laidlaw, sandy-whiskered, but given to profane swearing. Not that he ever swore in my presence, but he had the name for it among the colliers and ironworkers."
"It's from him," insinuated Hugh, "that Rhoda Polly gets her vocabulary."
"That's as it may be," his mother would reply patiently, her thoughts travelling before her to pick out number two.
"Let me see. For Hannah I had Doctor Butterworth—Tom Butterworth of Barrow-in-Furness—and of all the upsetting conceited creatures on this earth, commend me to Tom. Tom-Show-a-Leg he was called, because he came to the balls in knee-breeches and silk stockings. But for all that I will never deny that he did his duty by Hannah, though at times I had my own adoes to keep Dennis from heaving him out of the window.
"And there was Liz, poor thing. She had to put up with a 'locum' at Herbestal, in Belgium, before your father came here. There was not an English doctor in the place, but it made no great difference, for Madame Batyer was wiser than a whole college of doctors, and I will always think that beginning to be used to the language so soon has improved Liz's French accent!"