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Updated: June 17, 2025
I had not even invited these good ladies like greatness on the modest, they were thrust upon me. One is Irais, the sweet singer of the summer, whom I love as she deserves, but of whom I certainly thought I had seen the last for at least a year, when she wrote and asked if I would have her over Christmas, as her husband was out of sorts, and she didn't like him in that state.
I have been so busy ever since Irais and Minora left that I can hardly believe the spring is here, and the garden hurrying on its green and flowered petticoat only its petticoat as yet, for though the underwood is a fairyland of tender little leaves, the trees above are still quite bare.
She and Minora were going to help me decorate the trees, but very soon Irais wandered off to the piano, and Minora was tired and took up a book; so I called in Miss Jones and the babies it was Miss Jones's last public appearance, as I shall relate and after working for the best part of two days they were finished, and looked like lovely ladies in widespreading, sparkling petticoats, holding up their skirts with glittering fingers.
But children, nice little agreeable children. I very much like to hear you talk together. It is all so young and fresh what you think and what you believe, and not of the least consequence to any one. "Not of the least consequence?" cried Minora. "What we believe is of very great consequence indeed to us." "Are you jeering at our beliefs?" inquired Irais sternly. "Not for worlds.
Minora and Irais arrived yesterday together; or rather, when the carriage drove up, Irais got out of it alone, and informed me that there was a strange girl on a bicycle a little way behind. I sent back the carriage to pick her up, for it was dusk and the roads are terrible.
"But why do you have strange girls here at all?" asked Irais rather peevishly, taking off her hat in the library before the fire, and otherwise making herself very much at home; "I don't like them. I'm not sure that they're not worse than husbands who are out of order. Who is she? She would bicycle from the station, and is, I am sure, the first woman who has done it.
"But I wasn't going to," said Irais meekly; "I only paused to breathe. I must breathe, or perhaps I might die." The lights from my energetic friend's Schloss shone brightly down upon us as we passed round the base of the hill on which it stands; she is very proud of this hill, as well she may be, seeing that it is the only one in the whole district.
She has once or twice anxiously inquired whether Irais is sure she does not object to sleeping alone. "If you are at all nervous, I will come and keep you company," she said; "I don't mind at all, I assure you." But Irais is not to be taken in by such simple wiles, and has told me she would rather sleep with fifty ghosts than with one Minora.
I hope it has been made evident in these pages how superior Irais and myself are to the ordinary weaknesses of mankind; if any further proof were needed, it is furnished by the fact that we both, in defiance of tradition, scorn this celebration of birthday rites.
Why does your governess look so gloomy? When I see her at luncheon I always imagine she must have just heard that somebody is dead. But she can't hear that every day. What is the matter with her?" "I don't think she feels quite as proper as she looks," I said doubtfully; I was for ever trying to account for Miss Jones's expression. "But that must be rather nice," said Irais.
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