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"The same, ma'am," said Mrs. Mackridge. "They say he was extremelay popular in New South Wales. They looked up to him greatlay. I knew him, ma'am, as a young man. A very nice pleasant young fella." Interlude of respect.
She had been maid to the widow of Sir Roderick Blenderhasset Impey, some sort of governor or such-like portent in the East Indies, and from her remains in Mrs. Mackridge I judge Lady Impey was a very stupendous and crushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty, unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs.
It was hard on me, but perhaps it was also hard upon these rather over-fed, ageing, pretending people, that my youthful restlessness and rebellious unbelieving eyes should be thrust in among their dignities. Tea lasted for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and I sat it out perforce; and day after day the talk was exactly the same. "Sugar, Mrs. Mackridge?" my mother used to ask. "Sugar, Mrs.
"'Is predecessor," said Rabbits, who had acquired from some clerical model a precise emphatic articulation without acquiring at the same time the aspirates that would have graced it, "got into trouble at Sydney." "Haw!" said Mrs. Mackridge, scornfully, "so am tawled." "'E came to Templemorton after 'e came back, and I remember them talking 'im over after 'e'd gone again." "Haw?" said Mrs.
Mackridge had no wit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the old satins and trimmings of the great lady.
Mackridge paused and looked dreadfully at me "and the Second Thing" here she fixed me again "and the Third Thing" now I was released "needed in a colonial governor is Tact." She became aware of my doubts again, and added predominantly, "It has always struck me that that was a Singularly True Remark."
Latude-Fernay?" The word sugar would stir the mind of Mrs. Mackridge. "They say," she would begin, issuing her proclamation at least half her sentences began "they say" "sugar is fatt-an-ing, nowadays. Many of the best people do not take it at all." "Not with their tea, ma'am," said Rabbits intelligently. "Not with anything," said Mrs. Mackridge, with an air of crushing repartee, and drank.
And more particularly I hated it when Mrs. Mackridge and Mrs. Booch and Mrs. Latude-Fernay were staying in the house. They were, all three of them, pensioned-off servants. Old friends of Lady Drew's had rewarded them posthumously for a prolonged devotion to their minor comforts, and Mrs. Booch was also trustee for a favourite Skye terrier.
No doubt they were of negotiable size, but I was only a very little chap and they have assumed nightmare proportions in my mind. They loomed, they bulged, they impended. Mrs. Mackridge was large and dark; there was a marvel about her head, inasmuch as she was bald. She wore a dignified cap, and in front of that upon her brow, hair was PAINTED. I have never seen the like since.
A brisk discussion of how long we were to the longest or shortest day would ensue, and die away at last exhausted. Mrs. Mackridge, perhaps, would reopen. She had many intelligent habits; among others she read the paper The Morning Post. The other ladies would at times tackle that sheet, but only to read the births, marriages, and deaths on the front page.
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