XXVI
HAUNTS REVISITED
I think we were all a bit unstrung after this. It was a good many weeks before Cissy could bring herself to speak about Elizabeth Fortinbras, and then it was in a rush, as, indeed, she did everything. It was one afternoon, over at Young Mrs. Winter's. Mrs. Christopher Camsteary (who always was as superior as a pussy-cat with a new blue ribbon about her neck, all because her husband kept three gardeners, one of whom blacked the Camsteary boots) happened to remark that there was "a rather ladylike girl" in those butcher-people's sweet-shop opposite the station.
"She is a lady!" said Cissy Carter, lifting up her proud little chin with an air of finality.
And, indeed, there was, in Edam at least, no discussing with Miss Davenant Carter on such a matter. Mrs. Christopher Camsteary, whose husband, greatly to his credit, had made a large fortune in cattle-feeding oilcake ("in the wholesale, of course, you know, my dear!"), could not, even if she had wished, contradict the daughter of ten generations of Davenant Carters as to who was a lady and who not! So it was settled that, whenever Cissy Carter was in the room, Elizabeth Fortinbras was a lady. Which must have been a great comfort to her!
Well, the following summer-time when the good days came—perhaps because everybody, including even Hugh John, was a little tired and "edgy"—father took us all off to his own country.
I was the one who had seen the most of it before, as you may see if ever you have read the book called Sweetheart Travelers that father wrote about our gypsyings and goings-on. Of course (all our family say "of course"—and it all fills up first-rate when the man comes to count the pages up for printing)—well, of course I had forgotten a good deal about it, only I read over the book on the sly, and so was posted for everything as it came along.
This time we did not go on "The-Old-Homestead-on-Wheels," as we called the historic tricycle, but in the nicest and biggest of all wagonettes, with two lovely horses driven by a friend of ours with a cleverness which did one's heart good to see. His name was "Jim." We called him so from the first, and he was dreadfully nice to all of us, because he had been at school with father. This made us think for a good while that it was because of his superior goodness and cleverness there that so many people were glad to remember that they had been at school with father. Jim, when we asked him, said that it was so, but Hugh John immediately smelt a rat. So he asked another and yet older friend of father's, named Massa—because, I think, he sang negro melodies so beautifully. (Who would have thought that they sang "coon" songs so long ago?—but I suppose it was really just a kind of "boot-room music," or the sort of thing they play on board trip-steamers, when the trombone is away taking up a collection, and everybody is moving to the other side of the deck!) Well, Massa came along with us and Jim one lovely Saturday to see the place where my great-grandmother had kept sheep "on the bonny banks of the Cluden" a full hundred years ago.
Somehow I always liked that. It means more to a girl than even father's misdeeds, the hearing about which amuses the boys so.