The conversation became general, if that can be called conversation which consisted of some remarks upon the long-continued drought from Mrs. Hauton, with rejoinders as to the heat and dust of the city, from Mrs. Leslie. Mr. Leslie inquired something about the state of the crops of Mr. Hauton, and Mr. Hauton asked a question or two about the new rail-road. The young ladies kept up a little scattering small-talk, consisting chiefly of questions as to who had left town, and who remained yet in the city, and where the Leslies were going, etc., all of which Annie would have thought very dull, if she had not been too much oppressed by the novelty and elegance of every thing around her to dare to think at all.
After breakfast a walk was proposed through the garden, and Mrs. Hauton, with Mrs. Leslie, walking on before, the young ladies followed. Mrs. Hauton commenced a long story about her head gardener, who had behaved, she said, “very ungratefully in leaving her for a place where he could get higher wages, when she had dismissed the man she had, to take him, because he had offered to come on lower terms, and after she had kept him for a year, he had now left her, for the very wages she had given her first man; but they are all so mercenary,” she concluded with saying.
Annie could not help thinking that if a rich woman like Mrs. Hauton thought so much of additional wages, it was not surprising that her gardener, who probably had a family depending on him, did not value them less; nor did she see the call upon his gratitude for having been engaged at less than his worth.
Then Mrs. Hauton proceeded to tell Mrs. Leslie how many men they kept at work on the place, and how much they gave them a day, and at what an enormous cost they kept up the green-house, which “was, after all, of no use to them, as they spent their winters in the city, and the girls had more bouquets sent to them than they wanted.” And then followed her complaints of the grapery, which were equally pathetic, and all was excessively pompous and prosy.
Annie was in admiration of her aunt’s good breeding, which supplied her with patience and attention, and suitable rejoinders to all Mrs. Hauton’s enumeration of the calls on her purse, and the plagues of her wealth. Indeed, Annie began rather to doubt whether her aunt could be as tired as she at first thought she must be, she kept up the conversation with so little appearance of effort. She did not herself listen to the half of it, but whenever she did, she always found it was some long story about the dairy-woman, who would do what she should not, or the price of the luxuries by which they were surrounded, which Mrs. Hauton seemed to think a great imposition that they could not have for nothing.
Meantime the Miss Hautons kept up a languid complaint of the heat, and asked Kate if she did not find it “horrid.” And when Annie stopped to look at some beautiful and rare flowers, and asked their name, they replied they did not know, “the gardener could tell her,” and seemed rather annoyed at her stopping in the sun to look at them, and wondered at her curiosity about any thing so uninteresting. Annie was something of a botanist, and would gladly have lingered over other plants that were new to her, for the garden was under the highest cultivation; but she saw that it was an interruption to the rest of the party, and they sauntered on.
She could not help, however, pausing again with an exclamation of delight before a moss rose-tree in full bearing, when Miss Hauton said, somewhat sarcastically,
“You are quite an enthusiast in flowers, Miss Cameron.”
“I am very fond of them,” replied Annie, coloring at the tone in which the remark was made; “Are not you?”
“No,” replied the young lady, carelessly, “I don’t care for them at all. I like a bouquet well enough in the winter. It finishes one’s dress, but I don’t see the use of them at all in summer.”