Mrs. Chevington walked over yesterday before tea expressly to tell me, she said, that Mr. Phineas T. Parker and family, of New York, had arrived at Astley Court, having travelled down from London in a special Pullman attached to the Bristol express. I saw two of them this morning in Taunton going into St. Mary's with Baedekers, and Lady Beatrice called on them this afternoon, and by the end of the month the Parkers will be a county family. They are fabulously rich; I forget how many hundred million dollars Mr. Parker is worth, and of course nobody asks how he made his money. Algy says they are all kings in America and it doesn't matter, but as for that it doesn't matter in England either, where at the most the millionaires are only barons.
Nobody can talk of anything but their arrival, and everybody is singing Lady Beatrice's praises for having called on them so soon. Captain Bennett, who came this afternoon to bring back the songs and stupidly left two behind, says she should be canonised. Mr. Parker and his son have already been proposed and seconded at the Taunton Club; they have been asked to dine at the mess on guest-night; and both Father Ribbit and Mr. Frame, the High Church rector and Low Church curate, have offered them pews under the pulpit, and asked them to subscribe respectively to the Convent School of the Passionate Nuns and the Daily Soup Dispensary. But rumour has it that the Parkers are Baptists, and are going to the chapel in Holmes' the grocer's back-yard. I shall drive Mrs. Chevington over to Astley to-morrow and leave your card with mine.
On coming home from Taunton this morning, Perkins drove by Braxome. You know part of the road runs through the park, and I saw Lady Beatrice's equestrian cook out for an airing on a brown cob, with a couple of Gordon setters sniffing its hoofs. She really looked quite lady-like. Mrs. Chevington says her habit was made at Redfern's. Lady Beatrice found her in the Want column of the Standard.
"Young woman desires situation in County Family, as cook, housemaid, or companion; cook preferred. Must have use of horse daily. Highest references."
Lady Beatrice is delighted with her, and she will hunt with the West Somerset Harriers this coming season.
Captain Bennett Dislocates his Thumb
Captain Bennett dislocated his thumb at cricket to-day, and is hors de combat for the rest of the match. When he came back with the songs this afternoon he was suffering such pain that he asked me if I would mind putting on a fresh bandage for him. I told him that the sight of blood always made me faint, but he assured me the skin was not broken, so I took off the old bandage and put on a new one. It seemed to give him great relief, and he said I would make a splendid nurse, and looked at me with that queer blue fire look his eyes always have, when their expression is not as timid as a bashful boy's. He is awfully stupid at conversation, and one has to do all the talking. I asked him if they fed him properly at the Club, for he always looked so hungry whenever I met him. He replied that he was literally starving, but that nothing so material as food would satisfy his hunger, and that blue fire look came back into his eyes.
Captain Bennett in Delirium
I thought he was becoming delirious from the pain of his thumb, and I begged him to go home and send for the doctor. Then he did so strange a thing that I am sure it was done in delirium; he asked me to feel how fast his pulse was beating—it went tick-tock like a Waterbury watch—and he put his arm with the bad thumb round my waist, and called me an angel in the back of his throat and was hot all over. So I knew he had fever. I wasn't a bit afraid, for I have wonderful presence of mind, as you know. I have been told it is best to humour people in delirium, so I said I was sure I was an angel, for everybody told me so, and that if he would kindly stop crushing the jet spangles on my cream-coloured crepon bodice I would act like an angel to him. He instantly obeyed, and I rose and rang for James and told him that Captain Bennett was too ill to ride back to Taunton. Whereupon, before I could finish speaking, James asked if he should tell Perkins to get ready the brougham or dog-cart, and if I thought a glass of barley-water would do Captain Bennett good.
An Ideal Servant