"And you have to answer as if you were her? However do you do it, Kitten?"

"She gives me the general idea--she showed me the first time for the private letters, and now I know, but sometimes perhaps I write as if it were me!"

"And don't they know it is not her hand?"

"Of course, but they don't care. She is a great lady and a character, and she is very powerful in their circle of society, and it is worth everyone's while to be civil to her."

"It is all funny. Well, what else do you do?"

"Sometimes I have to do errands--shopping and so on--and then my luncheon comes--the food is lovely, and I am waited on by a footman called Thomas; he is the third; and on Wednesday Lady Garribardine took his and the butler's heads off because I had not been given coffee. She means me to be perfectly treated, I can tell you!"

"Coffee after your lunch, how genteel! And my! what a lot of servants.

Whatever do they all do?"

"Their work, I suppose. You forget it is a big house and everything is splendidly done and beautifully clean, and regular and orderly."

Here Matilda insisted upon a full list of all the retainers, and an account of their separate duties; her domestic soul revelled in these details, and at the end of the recital her awe knew no bounds. Katherine was able to give her a very circ.u.mstantial set of statements, as all accounts pa.s.sed through her hands.

"Well, your old lady must spend pints of money," Matilda said, with a sigh, "but we've not got to your afternoons yet, dearie. Do you work all them, too?"

"When I am very busy--it depends how much I have to do; if I am not very occupied and I have not been out in the morning, I go for a walk before tea. I have to take her ladyship's two fox-terriers, Jack and Joe; they are jolly little fellows, and I love them. We scamper in the square, or go as far as the Park."

"And your tea? They bring you up a cup, I suppose, every day--regular?"

"Not a cup--a whole tray to myself, and lovely m.u.f.fins and cream, Tild.

Lady Garribardine has a Jersey herd of cows at her place in Blankshire, and the cream comes up each day from there."

"My! how nice!" Matilda sighed again. Her imagination could hardly take in such luxury. It seemed to her that Katherine must be living in almost gilded vice!

"Then after tea, if I am not sent for to do any special thing, I read to myself. I look up anything that I don't know about that I have chanced to hear spoken of by the people who come--I am allowed to take books from the library."

"Then you do see people sometimes?" Matilda's interest revived again.

"What are they like, Kitten?"

"Sometimes I do, but not often--only when I chance to be sent for, but next week Her Ladyship has got a big charity tableaux entertainment on hand, that she is arranger and patroness of, and I shall come across lots of people of society, some of the ones you know the names of so well in the _Flare_."

"The d.u.c.h.ess of Dashington and the Countess of Blanktown--really, Kitten!"

This was fashion, indeed!

"Probably--but I don't know about the d.u.c.h.ess of Dashington. I don't think Lady Garribardine approves of her."

"Not approve of the d.u.c.h.ess of Dashington!" Matilda exclaimed, indignantly. "Her that has gentlemen to tea in her bedroom to give herself airs like that! Well, I never!"

This particular d.u.c.h.ess' photographs were the joy of the halfpenny ill.u.s.trated papers, and Matilda was accustomed to see her in skating costume waltzing with her instructor, and in golf costume and in private theatrical costumes, almost every other week.

"No--she speaks of her very cheaply--but I will tell you all about it on Sunday fortnight. I'll have heard everything by then, because the tableaux will be over."

Matilda returned to her muttons.

"Then you have supper, I suppose?"

"No--I go up and dress myself and put on my best blouse and have my dinner at eight o'clock; after that I generally read the paper or French books--and at ten I go to bed."

"Gracious! what's the good of dressing if you don't see anyone? How you'll use up your blouse!"

Matilda was aghast at such folly!

"I am supposed to be a lady, Tild, and a lady is expected to dress in the evening if she is alone on a desert island."

"What stuff! Whatever for?"

"Self-respect."

"Fiddlesticks."

Presently Katherine grew reflective, her catechism over. "I wish you could see it all, Tild; it would enlarge your brain--it is all so different from Bindon's Green. If you could only hear their point of view, I a.s.sure you, dear, it might be two different nations--those barefoot urchins climbing on the rails are much nearer their level than we are."

But Matilda could not stand this; her wrath rose.

"Those dirty boys nearer your new people than a real lady like Mabel Cawber, and your own brothers and sisters! Katherine, how dare you!

Horrid little guttersnipes with no pride of themselves; why, they aren't even ashamed to be here of a Sunday among decent people--they'd do anything!"

"That is just it, Tild--so would the aristocrats if they wanted to, and wouldn't be a bit ashamed or even think of it, and they have 'no pride of themselves,' either--but you'll never understand, Tild, not if you live to be a hundred years old."

"And I don't want to, there!"

"Then it is perfectly useless my talking, I see that. We had better go and have some tea."

And so they turned out of Albert Gate and walked to Victoria.

Matilda, when she had smoothed her ruffled feelings, began now to relate the home news. Gladys and her fiance were not happy together; they had not been so since that visit which Katherine would remember they had taken to Brighton to stay with his aunt--it was nearly six weeks ago now and both grew more and more gloomy.

"And so uppy as Glad is with Fred, too, and never a bit back on Bob Hartley!"

Matilda felt things would be better for her sister if a little more spirit were shown. Mabel and her betrothed had been up for church parade as usual in the Park that morning, and this lady had also supped with them at Laburnum Villa the night before, and they had had oysters and a jolly time.

Katherine felt a strange emotion when she heard of this. She seemed to see a picture of Lord Algy enjoying oysters, and all the reflections this action had called up--oh! how long ago it all appeared!

"And have you met that gentlemen you spoke of?" Matilda asked, before they parted at the station.

"Mr. Strobridge, you mean--Lady Garribardine's nephew. Yes--he is husband of the lady Glad dresses, the one who had the model she wanted me to have. He is a clever man--we have not really spoken yet, but I mean to know him very well some day."

"Oh! Kitten, do be careful! And him a married man, too!"

"For what I want of him, it does not matter whether he is married or single," Katherine rea.s.sured her, and soon the train moved off.

How good Matilda was! Katherine thought, as she walked briskly back to Berkeley Square--an unselfish, worthy, honest, hopelessly stupid creature, whom somehow she was fond of. But what could it be that made her herself so utterly different from them all? Nothing could be chance--everything had its reason, only we were generally too blind to perceive it. So was there some truth in that vague story of the great-grandmother having been someone of high family fallen low in the world and married to the auctioneer great-grandfather, whom her own father remembered very well? Could it be that some drop of gentle blood flowed in her veins, transmitted from this source and concentrated in her, having escaped the others--or was it simply from the years of her reading that her mind had developed? But it could not be altogether that, because she remembered instincts and tastes in uneducated early childhood completely aloof from the family's.