EDWARD was standing ginger-beer like a gentleman, happening, as the one
that had last passed under the dentist’s hands, to be the capitalist of
the flying hour. As in all well-regulated families, the usual tariff
obtained in ours: half-a-crown a tooth; one shilling only if the
molar were a loose one. This one, unfortunately—in spite of Edward’s
interested affectation of agony—had been shakiness undisguised; but the
event was good enough to run to ginger-beer. As financier, however,
Edward had claimed exemption from any servile duties of procurement,
and had swaggered about the garden while I fetched from the village
post-office, and Harold stole a tumbler from the pantry. Our
preparations complete, we were sprawling on the lawn; the staidest and
most self-respecting of the rabbits had been let loose to grace the
feast, and was lopping demurely about the grass, selecting the juiciest
plantains; while Selina, as the eldest lady present, was toying, in her
affected feminine way, with the first full tumbler, daintily fishing
for bits of broken cork.
‘Hurry up, can’t you?’ growled our host; ‘what are you girls always so
beastly particular for?’
‘Martha says,’ explained Harold (thirsty too, but still just), ‘that
if you swallow a bit of cork, it swells, and it swells, and it swells
inside you, till you——’
‘O bosh!’ said Edward, draining the glass with a fine pretence of
indifference to consequences, but all the same (as I noticed) dodging
the floating cork-fragments with skill and judgment.
‘O, it’s all very well to say bosh,’ replied Harold nettled: ‘but every
one knows it’s true but you. Why, when Uncle Thomas was here last, and
they got up a bottle of wine for him, he took just one tiny sip out of
his glass, and then he said, “Poo, my goodness, that’s corked!” And
he wouldn’t touch it. And they had to get a fresh bottle up. The funny
part was, though, I looked in his glass afterwards, when it was brought
out into the passage, and there wasn’t any cork in it at all! So I
drank it all off, and it was very good!’
‘You’d better be careful, young man!’ said his elder brother, regarding
him severely: ‘D’you remember that night when the Mummers were here,
and they had mulled port, and you went round and emptied all the
glasses after they had gone away?’
‘Ow! I did feel funny that night,’ chuckled Harold. ‘Thought the house
was comin’ down, it jumped about so: and Martha had to carry me up to
bed, ’cos the stairs was goin’ all waggity!’
We gazed searchingly at our graceless junior; but it was clear that
he viewed the matter in the light of a phenomenon rather than of a
delinquency.
A third bottle was by this time circling; and Selina, who had evidently
waited for it to reach her, took a most unfairly long pull, and then,
jumping up and shaking out her frock, announced that she was going
for a walk. Then she fled like a hare; for it was the custom of our
Family to meet with physical coercion any independence of action in
individuals.
[Illustration: “‘SHE’S OFF WITH THOSE VICARAGE GIRLS AGAIN,’ SAID
EDWARD”]
‘She’s off with those Vicarage girls again,’ said Edward, regarding
Selina’s long black legs twinkling down the path. ‘She goes out with
them every day now; and as soon as ever they start, all their heads go
together and they chatter, chatter, chatter the whole blessèd time!
I can’t make out what they find to talk about. They never stop; it’s
gabble, gabble, gabble right along, like a nest of young rooks!’
‘P’raps they talk about birds’-eggs,’ I suggested sleepily (the sun
was hot, the turf soft, the ginger-beer potent); ‘and about ships, and
buffaloes, and desert islands; and why rabbits have white tails; and
whether they’d sooner have a schooner or a cutter; and what they’ll be
when they’re men—at least, I mean there’s lots of things to talk about,
if you _want_ to talk.’
‘Yes; but they don’t talk about those sort of things at all,’
persisted Edward. ‘How _can_ they? They don’t _know_ anything; they
can’t _do_ anything—except play the piano, and nobody would want
to talk about _that_; and they don’t care about anything—anything
sensible, I mean. So what _do_ they talk about?’
‘I asked Martha once,’ put in Harold; ‘and she said, “Never _you_ mind;
young ladies has lots of things to talk about that young gentlemen
can’t understand.”’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Edward growled.
‘Well, that’s what she _said_, anyway,’ rejoined Harold indifferently.
The subject did not seem to him of first-class importance, and it was
hindering the circulation of the ginger-beer.
We heard the click of the front-gate. Through a gap in the hedge we
could see the party setting off down the road. Selina was in the
middle; a Vicarage girl had her by either arm; their heads were
together, as Edward had described; and the clack of their tongues came
down the breeze like the busy pipe of starlings on a bright March
morning.
‘What _do_ they talk about, Charlotte?’ I inquired, wishing to pacify
Edward. ‘You go out with them sometimes.’
‘I don’t know,’ said poor Charlotte dolefully. ‘They make me walk
behind, ’cos they say I’m too little, and mustn’t hear. And I _do_ want
to so,’ she added.
‘When any lady comes to see Aunt Eliza,’ said Harold, ‘they both talk
at once all the time. And yet each of ’em seems to hear what the other
one’s saying. I can’t make out how they do it. Grown-up people are so
clever!’
‘The Curate’s the funniest man,’ I remarked. ‘He’s always saying things
that have no sense in them at all, and then laughing at them as if
they were jokes. Yesterday, when they asked him if he’d have some more
tea, he said, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,”
and then sniggered all over. I didn’t see anything funny in that. And
then somebody asked him about his button-hole, and he said, “’Tis but a
little faded flower,” and exploded again. I thought it very stupid.’
‘O _him_,’ said Edward contemptuously: ‘he can’t help it, you know;
it’s a sort of way he’s got. But it’s these girls I can’t make out.
If they’ve anything really sensible to talk about, how is it nobody
knows what it is? And if they haven’t—and we know they _can’t_ have,
naturally—why don’t they shut up their jaw? This old rabbit here—_he_
doesn’t want to talk. He’s got something better to do.’ And Edward
aimed a ginger-beer cork at the unruffled beast, who never budged.
‘O but rabbits _do_ talk,’ interposed Harold. ‘I’ve watched them often
in their hutch. They put their heads together and their noses go up
and down, just like Selina’s and the Vicarage girls’. Only of course I
can’t hear what they’re saying.’
‘Well, if they do,’ said Edward unwillingly, ‘I’ll bet they don’t talk
such rot as those girls do!’ Which was ungenerous, as well as unfair;
for it had not yet transpired—nor has it to this day—_what_ Selina and
her friends talked about.
[Illustration]