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I shall lose my temper if you trot them out to me. Miss Buckston never lost her temper, however; other people's opinions counted too little with her for that. At the end of the first week Althea felt distinctly that though the country, even under these dismal climatic conditions, might be delightful if shared with some people, it was not delightful shared with Miss Buckston.
She had always, till now, found Miss Buckston's cheerful dogmatism fortifying, and, even when it irritated her, instructive; but she had now new standards of interest, and new sources of refreshment, and, shut up with Miss Buckston for a rainy week, she felt as never before the defects of this excellent person's many qualities.
Helen interested him, but she did not stir in him the least wistfulness or wonder, as charm should do. Miss Buckston interested him, too. And she was very sure that Franklin while liking Helen as a human creature so he liked Miss Buckston disapproved of her as a type. Of course, he must disapprove of her.
Miss Buckston, Aunt Julia, the girls, and Herbert Vaughan had driven over to a neighbouring garden-party, and Althea alleged the arrival of her old friend as a very valid excuse. She walked up and down the drawing-room, dressed in one of her prettiest dresses; the soft warmth and light of the low sun filled the air, and her heart expanded with it. She wondered if ah, if only!
There are some nice ones near Miss Buckston's. 'Oh, don't let us be too near Miss Buckston, said Helen, laughing. 'But surely, Althea, you won't give up Bayreuth, Aunt Julia interposed. 'It is going to be specially fine this year. And then you know so few people in England, you will be very lonely. Nothing is more lonely than the English country when you know nobody.
Lady Blair was the widow of a judge, and, in her large velvet drawing-room, a thick fog outside and a number of elderly legal ladies drinking tea about her, Althea had always felt herself to be in the very heart of British social safety. Lady Blair was an old friend of her mother's, and, with Miss Buckston, was her nearest English friend.
Among the serried ranks of singing heads hers had stood out with its rubicund energy, its air of mastery, the shining of its eye-glasses and of its large white teeth; and while she sang Miss Buckston had jerked her head rhythmically to one side and beaten time with her hand as if to encourage and direct her less competent companions.
Have you a lot of English people with you? 'Only one; Miss Buckston, you know. Aunt Julia and the girls are here, and Herbert Vaughan, their friend. You know Herbert Vaughan; such a nice young creature; his mother is a Bostonian. 'I know about him; I don't know him, said Franklin, who indeed, as she reflected, would not be likely to have met the fashionable Herbert.
The girls, for their part, though seeing Franklin as a fair object for chaff, conceived of him as wholly suitable. Though they chaffed him, they never did so to his disadvantage, and they were respectful spectators of his enterprise. They had the nicest sense of loyalty for serious situations. And Miss Buckston was of all the most satisfactory in her attitude.
He was poor. She remembered his socks and ties, his general rightness. She wondered how much he spent on his clothes. She was silent for a moment, struggling with her trivial and with her deep discomfitures, and she saw the figures of Miss Buckston and of Franklin both so funny, both so earnest appear at the farther edge of the lawn engaged in strenuous converse.
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