300, PARK STREET,
_Saturday night, Nov. 19th_.
I DO not much care to look back to the rest of my stay at Tryland. It
is an unpleasant memory.
That next day after I last wrote, it poured with rain, and every one
came down cross to breakfast. The whole party appeared except Lady
Verningham, and breakfast was just as stiff and boring as dinner. I
happened to be seated when Lord Robert came in, and Malcolm was in the
place beside me. Lord Robert hardly spoke, and looked at me once, or
twice, with his eyebrows right up.
I did long to say it was because I had promised Lady Ver I would not
play with him that I was not talking to him now like the afternoon
before. I wonder if he ever guessed it. Oh! I wished then, and I have
wished a hundred times since, that I had never promised at all. It
seemed as if it would be wisest to avoid him, as how could I explain
the change in myself. I hated the food, and Malcolm had such an air of
proprietorship, it annoyed me as much as I could see it annoyed Lady
Katherine. I sniffed at him, and was as disagreeable as could be.
The breakfasts there don’t shine, and porridge is pressed upon people
by Mr. Montgomerie. “Capital stuff to begin the day, Bur-r-r-r,” he
says.
Lord Robert could not find anything he wanted, it seemed. Every one
was peevish. Lady Katherine has a way of marshalling people on every
occasion; she reminds me of a hen with chickens, putting her wings
down, and clucking, and chasing, till they are all in a corner. And
she is rather that shape, too, very much rounded in front. The female
brood soon found themselves in the morning-room, with the door shut,
and no doubt the male things fared the same with their host, anyway we
saw no more of them till we caught sight of them passing the windows in
’scutums and mackintoshes, a depressed company of sportsmen.
The only fortunate part was that Malcolm had found no opportunity to
remind me of my promise, whatever it was, and I felt safer.
Oh! that terrible morning! Much worse than when we were alone--nearly
all of them--about seven women beyond the family--began fancy work.
One, a Lady Letitia Smith, was doing a crewel silk blotting-book that
made me quite bilious to look at, and she was very short-sighted, and
had such an irritating habit of asking every one to match her threads
for her. They knitted ties and stockings, and crocheted waistcoats and
comforters and hoods for the North Sea fishermen, and one even tatted.
Just like housemaids do in their spare hours to trim Heaven knows what
garment of unbleached calico.
I asked her what it was for, and she said for the children’s pinafores
in her “Guild” work. If one doesn’t call that waste of time, I wonder
what is!
Mrs. Carruthers said it was much more useful to learn to sit still and
not fidget than to fill the world with rubbish like this.
Mary Mackintosh dominated the conversation. She and Lady Letitia Smith,
who have both small babies, revelled in nursery details, and then
whispered bits for us--the young girls--not to hear. We caught scraps
though, and it sounded gruesome, whatever it was about. Oh! I do wonder
when I get married if I shall grow like them.