Upsidonia Part 9

"So there are here. So we are not so very different in our tastes, you see."

"Tell me truthfully," I said, leaving this point; "don't you like wearing pretty clothes?"

She blushed, and laughed. "Perhaps I should if all my friends did," she said, but added a little primly: "You can be prettily dressed when you are poor, and you don't have to change your clothes two or three times a day to please your maid."

"You wouldn't have to please your maid in England," I said. "She would have to please you, and if she didn't you would get rid of her and have another one."

She looked at me incredulously. "That is the most extraordinary thing you have told me yet," she said. "Servants here are the greatest nuisance in the world. They won't let you do a thing for yourself if they can possibly stop you, and you can't call your life your own. How I envy my cousins sometimes, who can go where they like and do what they like without for ever being obliged to think of finding work for a lot of disagreeable superior servants!"

"But can't you do what you like?" I asked. "Aren't you and I going to do what we like this afternoon? Your servants haven't bothered us much so far."

"Our servants are very kind to us. Of course it is not as though we really belonged to the rich. But I must say that I am rather surprised at their having left us alone for so long."

As if in answer to her, the butler, Mr. Blother, and the footman, Lord Arthur, came out of the house at that moment, carrying a tray on which was a large jug of iced cup of some sort, and a dish of strawberries and cream.

"Oh, Mr. Blother!" exclaimed Miriam. "You can't be so cruel as to expect us to eat and drink any more now!"

"My dear Miriam," said Mr. Blother, in a fatherly manner, "you must eat a few strawberries, or what is the good of the gardener picking them? I will let you off the hock cup until you have had a set or two; but I thought that both you and Mr. Howard would be able to drink it after you had got hot. It is quite time you began to play. Arthur and I are ready to field the b.a.l.l.s now, and we want some exercise out of doors badly."

He and the footman bustled away to put up the net, and I went upstairs to put on a pair of tennis shoes. When I came down again the net was up and the racquets and b.a.l.l.s were ready for us.

Lord Arthur looked at me with some displeasure. "I don't know why you couldn't have asked me to fetch your shoes," he said. "You and I will fall out if you bring your airs of poverty and independence here."

"I'll give you some work to do, if that is what you want," I said. "I'm not very good at this game, and I am a hard and rather wild hitter."

But it was Mr. Blother who fielded the b.a.l.l.s behind Miriam, and it pleased me to see him running about here and there in his swallowtail coat, and getting into a terrible state of perspiration and breathlessness.

When we had played a couple of sets it was Mr. Blother who stopped us.

"I think you have done enough for the present," he said, wiping his heated brow. "Thank you very much, Mr. Howard, for playing so badly. I have seldom enjoyed a game more. Now I think you can both manage to polish off some of that hock cup."

I was quite ready to do so. I rather spoilt the good impression I had made on Mr. Blother by asking if he did not feel inclined for a drink himself. He withered me with his eye, and stalked off indoors, followed by the indignant Lord Arthur, who said to me as he pa.s.sed:

"You seem to have brought very queer ideas of behaviour with you, wherever you have come from."

Miriam too looked at me doubtfully when we were once more left alone together. "I know you only meant it for fun," she said, "but Mr. Blother is so kind and good that it is a shame to tease him."

"But don't you think he would like a drink?" I asked. "You saw how awfully hot he was."

"Of course he would like it," she said. "That is why I think it is too bad to tease him."

I enjoyed my own drink a good deal. Mr. Blother was a king of cup-makers.

Miriam sipped only half a gla.s.s, and I was careful not to press her to drink any more. I was quite capable of emptying the rest of the jug myself, and poured out a second gla.s.s, with the remark that I had not meant to offend Mr. Blother, and I would now try to make it up to him.

This pleased her, and she said, with her delightful frank and friendly smile: "You are really awfully good, and I am sure the servants will adore you. We do our best to treat them well, but I am afraid we do grumble a lot, and you seem to do things to please them quite naturally."

"We are brought up to be unselfish in England," I said modestly, and filled a third gla.s.s, emptying the jug.

"Are you ready to play again?" Miriam asked. "We might get two of the maids to field the b.a.l.l.s. They would be pleased if we were to ask them."

"I have had a good deal of exercise lately," I said, "and it is very hot. What I should really like to do would be to sit here a little longer, and then have a wander round the garden. I am very fond of gardens, and I should like to see this one, which looks lovely."

Again, to my great surprise, Miriam blushed deeply. She rose from her chair, and said, looking away from me: "I am going in now. Mollie will be out in a minute, and she will take you round the garden if you want to see it."

Then she went indoors, leaving me to wonder what on earth I had said to cause her such confusion.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The Highlanders were much looked up to by dwellers in other parts of Upsidonia. They were a thrifty hard-living race of fine physique, who had kept very much to themselves, owing largely to the inaccessibility of the country they inhabited; they seldom visited any other part of Upsidonia, or welcomed visitors to their own. They had no rich among them, and seemed to have solved all the economic problems that were so disturbing in and around Culbut, for instance. There were no towns in the Highlands; everybody lived on the land, and as the soil was very poor they had a hard struggle for existence, which brought out the best that was in them. Luxury was absolutely unknown amongst them, but learning flourished. Living so far north, they had long dark winters, which they spent in close study. Their chief form of relaxation was the holding of compet.i.tive examinations, for which they all entered. Those who came out first were examiners next time.

CHAPTER X

I was not left alone long. Mollie came out of the house, and greeted me in friendly childish fas.h.i.+on.

"Lessons over for the day," she said, throwing herself into a chair. "I suppose you will be awfully shocked if I say that I am glad of it."

She shook her thick ma.s.s of curls at me, with a challenging laugh.

"I am not shocked in the least," I said. "I think lessons on a hot afternoon must be a great bore for little girls."

"What an awful thing to say! I am afraid you are a very wicked man, but, of course, you don't mean it. Miriam is rather tired of talking to you, and asked me to come and take her place. What shall we do?"

I was rather disturbed at the information so frankly delivered, and said boldly: "I want to see the garden. Will you take me round?"

The request, which had driven Miriam away, seemed to make no disagreeable impression on Mollie. She jumped up at once and said: "Yes, come along; and after that we will play tennis, unless you're too tired.

Tom won't play with me,[15] and I hardly ever get a game."

We went round the garden, which was beautifully laid out and beautifully kept. We came across three or four gardeners, all toiling as if for their lives, and one of them, I supposed, was the baronet of whom Lord Arthur had told me, although none of them looked in the least like a baronet.

There was a lovely rose-garden, in a corner by itself, and as roses were rather a hobby of mine I examined each of the beds with some care.

In one of them I stooped down to pick up a weed. It was the first I had seen anywhere.

"Oh, you mustn't do that," said Mollie, with round eyes expressive of horror. "Thank goodness none of the gardeners saw you! Can't you plant it again to look as if it had not been pulled up?"

I replanted the weed as if it had been something rare.

"That looks all right," said Mollie, with her head on one side. "Let's go and find Mr. Hobbs and tell him."

We went in search of the head gardener, whom we found digging in a corner of the vegetable garden. He was an austere man, and drew himself up with displeasure when Mollie told him that we had found a weed in the bed of white roses.

"White roses!" he repeated. "What white roses?"

"The big ones," said Mollie. "I don't know their name."