“Don’t talk to me about servants—old country servants, at least the kind we get out here, are exasperating, and the native-born domestic has ceased to exist. I’m all right now, but a month ago I had a terror—English. She wore white, transparent stockings, and tennis shoes about the house and, above deck, low neck dresses. I told her she must alter her attire, and she used up a bottle of my blacking transforming her tennis shoes. As to rising she was another Elsie Marley. One morning Mr. Somers met her on the stairs late as usual, and told her he was about to take her breakfast up to her. This did not affect her in the least for next day she admired a brooch I was wearing. ‘What a nice brooch,’ she exclaimed, ‘are the stones real?’ ”
This sort of talk went on until in came Mrs. Mount. I was so glad, for although Mrs. Bassett was warming up, she was yet leagues behind Mrs. Mount in her appeal to my interest. Imagine my joy, therefore, when I saw Mrs. Mount making directly towards us. She bounced up to our table and sat down, giving an order to a waitress as she did so. “So glad to see you both,” she gushed, evidently viewing Ethel and myself as nonentities or not viewing us at all, “Doris and I are sailing on the Carmania from New York for the Mediterranean on January 15th; and, do you know, really, it is such a fag. There’s Mrs. Lien’s ball on New Year’s Eve. Of course Doris must have a new dress and possibly I may give a dance too, before we sail. I suppose you girls have been invited?” And we were for the first time honoured by her notice.
“They both are going,” replied Mumsie.
“Mrs. Lien is so kind; and, after all, there is nothing like the old families, provided there is go in them.”
I could see however, she was surprised at my being invited.
“What I was going to say is that I will take this opportunity of saying good-bye.”
“You like Italy?” I could see Mumsie was brimming with merriment.
“Yes, I like Italy,” she threw her head back as if to bring her chin into special prominence. “But, now it is so beastly common, full of trippers, German and American. One meets them everywhere and cannot get away from them. Their ways are”—she paused for the word—“uncouth. Naples?—No! Rome?—No! Florence? Yes. Florence has the best tea-room in Europe.”
“Venice must be very interesting,” suggested Mrs. Bassett, with a half sigh that told me she felt her prospects of seeing Italy were remote, and her desire to do so great, “the Palace of the Doges,—the Lion of St. Mark.”
“Venice is no place to go to; most disappointing. There is not a decent tea-room in the place.”