‘I will never let her feel in the way. I will never let her feel
that I have taken Walter away from her.’
And so we settled down in our own home, and enjoyed it. Walter
began work again. His University work did not begin till October,
but besides that, he was writing a book on proto-Hittite scripts.
He was only at the beginning of the book, the very beginning,
and it would take many years to finish, he said, but it would
be the only book on that subject, or at least on that aspect
of the subject.
He had a study upstairs, looking out on the garden behind. He
was very pleased with the study; he said it was so quiet, and
there was good wall space for books.
He would work there all the morning, while I did housekeeping
and gardening. I found the housekeeping great fun. I bought cookery
books, and made Sarah try new recipes, French and Italian ones
that I found in books. She did not mind trying, though they did
not always turn out very well. She treated me as though I were
a child whom she was humouring; she made me feel always, that
she knew much more about it all than I did, but then, that was
quite true, and I did not mind.
I used to go marketing with a basket; there was a little group
of shops, down the hill, two streets away; sometimes I used to
go there, and sometimes further afield. It was interesting to
me to discover the prices of things, for I had never heard prices
discussed, and knew nothing about them. I did not know that chicken
cost more than rabbit. At Yearsly, we had both fairly often,
and both were supplied at home; it never seemed to make any difference
which we had, and at Campden Hill Square, it was much the same;
chickens and game and rabbits came from Yearsly, and I never
heard Grandmother speak about the price of food.
Sometimes now they sent hampers to me, and that was nice, but
I enjoyed more to buy my own food. It seems odd now to think
that one ever could enjoy it.
The first trouble was when Maud came to lunch, on the 1st of
October, and I had bought a pheasant. It was expensive; I was
surprised to find how expensive it was, but we always had pheasants
at Yearsly on the 1st of October; Cousin John always went out
to shoot them in the morning, and Guy with him as a rule, and
some were sent to Grandmother; these, of course, she did not
get till the next day. I would have had some too, if I had waited,
for Cousin John sent some to me too that year; I might have known
he would, but I did not think of that at all; I only wanted a
nice lunch for Maud, and in the shop I saw pheasants, and I remembered
it was the first, and I thought:
‘That will be just the thing for Maud! I must try and please
Maud, for Walter’s sake.’
The pheasant cost fifteen shillings, and I bought it, and Maud
was not pleased at all. She remarked on it at once.
She said:
‘Pheasant already! I did not think they were in season yet!’
And I said:
‘It is the first to-day.’
She said:
‘The first?’
‘The 1st of October. I don’t know how they got them in the shop
so early, though.’
She said:
‘My dear child, you don’t mean to say you bought a pheasant the
first day they came in?’
And I said:
‘Yes; I saw it in the shop, and I remembered it was the first.
Guy will have gone down to Yearsly to-day; he always does.’
Then Maud asked me what it had cost, and I told her fifteen shillings,
and she took in a deep breath, and looked at Walter, and Walter
looked uncomfortable. Maud asked him whether he made me a housekeeping
allowance and he said he didn’t, and then Maud asked me how much
I spent on my housekeeping every week, and I said I did not know.
And then Maud said I must keep accounts. She said it was most
important.
After lunch, she began to show me how to do them. She had an
elaborate method, ‘double entry’ she called it, which was supposed
to show quite clearly if one had made a mistake. I tried to understand
it and to use it, but it was really no use to me, for when the
sum came out wrong, which was very often, I could not understand
at all how to make it come right. Afterwards, I asked Mollie
to show me her way, and that was better. There was much less
system in Mollie’s accounts than in Maud’s, and I understood
them much better. Now, I have still to do accounts, for Walter
likes me to, and in all these years I have grown accustomed to
it, but they do not come right very often, even now; I have never
learned to be efficient, as Mollie learned with her father; you
cannot develop what is not there at all; Walter does not realize
that; I do, now.
That was an unhappy afternoon. Maud went on and on. She seemed
to think that it was an arithmetic lesson, and that I was a stupid
child. I always was stupid at arithmetic, I know, but she made
it worse, and all the time, I resented her interfering. I felt
angry, and rebellious, and not really ashamed of myself, as she
seemed to expect me to be.