Virginia and her sister Ursula are my most intimate friends.
Virginia—really quite a harmless girl—imagines she has a scientific
bias. Ursula—domesticated to the backbone—led a strenuous life in the
pursuit of experimental psychology, till she switched off to wash
hospital saucepans.
It will be so obvious that I scarcely need add: What little common
sense the trio possesses is centred in ME.
Abigail is my housemaid; her title to fame is the fact that she is the
only servant I have ever been able to induce to remain more than a
fortnight at one stretch in the country. The others, including those
who are orphans, always have a parent who suddenly breaks its leg—after
they have been about ten days away—and wires for them to come home at
once.
The cook has discovered a number of cousins in the Naval Division at
the Crystal Palace (detachments of which pass my London house hourly,
while many units partake of my cake and lemonade), and, of course, you
can’t neglect your relatives in war time.
“You never know whether that’ll be the last time you’ll see them,” she
says, waving a tearful tea-towel at all and sundry who march past.
Naturally, _she_ doesn’t care to be away from town for many days at a
time.
The parlourmaid was interested in a member of the L.C.C. Fire Brigade,
when he enlisted, and incidentally married someone else—unfortunately
the very week she was away with me. This has given her a marked
distaste for the simple pleasures of rural life.
Abigail is unengaged. “What I ask is: What better off are you if you
are?” she inquires of space. “Take my sister, now, with eight children,
and——” But as I am not taking anyone with eight children just now, the
sister’s biography is neither here nor there.
Abigail is a willing, kindhearted girl. Also she has a mania for trying
to arrange every single household ornament in pairs. She would be
invaluable to anyone outfitting a Noah’s Ark.
* * * * *
As for the other people who walk through these pages, they do not
appertain exclusively to one district. I have had two cottages, one
beyond Godalming, in Surrey, the other high up among the hills that
border the river Wye. Some of the country folk live in the one village,
some in the other; but the scenery, the little wild things, and the
garden are all related to the cottage that overlooks Tintern Abbey.