Miriam grinned.
“You’ve got it. I knew you would. The Misses Perne have engaged Miss Miriam Henderson as resident teacher for the junior school.”
“Oh yes, I’ve got it,” smiled Miriam. “But don’t let’s talk about that. It’s just an old school, a house. I don’t know a bit what it’ll be like. I’ve got three bally blooming weeks. Don’t let’s talk about it.”
“Awri.”
“What about Saturday?”
“It’s all right. Ted was at the club.”
“Was he!”
“Yes, old scarlet face, he were.”
“I’m not.”
“He came in just before closing time and straight up to me and ast where you were. He looked sick when I told him, and so fagged.”
“It was awfully hot in town,” murmured Miriam tenderly.
She went to the piano and struck a note very softly.
“He played a single with the duffer and lost it.”
“Oh, well, of course, he was so tired.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t that. It was because you weren’t there. He’s simply no good when you’re not there, now. He’s perfectly different.”
Miriam struck her note again.
“Listen, that’s E flat.”
“Go on.”
“That’s a chord in E flat. Isn’t it lovely? It sounds perfectly different in C. Listen. Isn’t it funny?”
“Well, don’t you want to know why it’s all right about Saturday?”
“Yes, screamingly.”
“Well, that’s the perfectly flabbergasting thing. Ted simply came to say they’ve got a man coming to stay with them and can he bring him.”
“My dear! What a heavenly relief. That makes twelve men and fourteen girls. That’ll do.”
“Nan Babington’s hurt her ankle, but she swears she’s coming.” Harriett sniffed and sank down on the white sheepskin, drawing her knees up to her chin.
“You shouldn’t say ‘swears.’ ”
“Well, you bet. She simply loves our dances.”
“Did she say she did?”
“She sat on the pavilion seat with Bevan Seymour all the afternoon and I was with them when Ted was playing with the duffer. She told Bevan that she didn’t know anywhere else where the kids arranged the dances, and everything was so jolly. It’s screaming, my dear, she said.”
“It’s horrid the way she calls him ‘my dear.’ Your ring is simply dazzling like that, Harry. D’you see? It’s the sun.”
“Of course it’ll mean she’ll sit out in a deck chair in the garden with Bevan all the time.”
“How disgusting.”
“It’s her turn for the pavilion tea on Saturday. She’s coming in her white muslin and then coming straight on here with two sticks and wants us to keep her some flowers. Let’s go and have tea. It’ll be nearly dinner time.”
“Has Mary made a cake?”
“I dunno. Tea was to be in the breakfast-room when you came back.”
“Why not in the conservatory?”
“Because, you silly old crow, I’m beranging it for Saturday.”
“Shall we have the piano in there?”
“Well, don’t you think so?”
“Twenty-six of us. Perhaps it’ll be more blissful.”
“If we have the breakfast-room piano in the hall it’ll bung up the hall.”
“Yes, but the Erard bass is so perfect for waltzes.”
“And the be-rilliant Collard treble is so all right in the vatoire.”
“I thought it was Eve and I talked about the Collard treble.”
“Well, I was there.”
“Anyhow we’ll have the grand in the conservatory. Oh, Bacchus! Ta-ra-ra-boom-deay.”
“Tea,” said a rounded voice near the keyhole.
“Eve!” shouted Miriam.
The door opened slightly. “I know,” said the voice.
“Come in, Eve,” commanded Miriam, trying to swing the door wide.
“I know,” said the voice quivering with the effort of holding the door. “I know all about the new Misses Perne and the new man—Max Sonnenheim—Max.”
“This way out,” called Harriett from the conservatory.
“Eve,” pleaded Miriam, tugging at the door, “let me get at you. Don’t be an idiot.”
A gurgle of amusement made her loosen her hold.
“I’m not trying, you beast. Take your iron wrists away.”
A small white hand waggled fingers through the aperture.
Miriam seized and covered it. “Come in for a minute,” she begged. “I want to see you. What have you got on?”
“Tea.”
The hand twisted itself free and Eve fled through the hall.
Miriam flung after her with a yell and caught at her slender body. “I’ve a great mind to drag down your old hair.”
“Tea,” smiled Eve serenely.
“All right, I’m coming, damn you, aren’t I?”
“Oh, Mimmy!”
“Well, damn me, then. Somebody in the house must swear. I say, Eve?”
“What?”
“Nothing, only I say.”
“Um.”
II
Miriam extended herself on the drawing-room sofa which had been drawn up at the end of the room under the open window.
The quintets of candles on the girandoles hanging on either side of the high overmantel gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the centre of the large room the chandelier, pulled low, held out in all directions bulbs of softly tinted light.
In an intensity of rose-shaded brilliance pouring from a tall standard lamp across the sheepskin hearthrug stood a guest with a fiddle under her arm fluttering pages on a music stand. The family sat grouped towards her in a circle.
On her low sofa, outside the more brilliant light, Miriam was a retreating loop in the circle of seated forms, all visible as she lay with her eyes on the ceiling. But no eyes could meet and pilfer her own. The darkness brimmed in from the window on her right. She could touch the rose-leaves on the sill and listen to the dewy stillness of the garden.
“What shall I play?” said the guest.
“What have you there?”
“Gluck … Klassische Stücke … Cavatina.”
“Ah, Gluck,” said Mr. Henderson, smoothing his long knees with outspread fingers.
“Have you got that Beethoven thing?” asked Sarah.
“Not here, Sally.”
“I saw it—on the piano—with chords,” said Sarah excitedly.
“Chords,” encouraged Miriam.
“Yes, I think so,” muttered Sarah taking up her crochet. “I daresay I’m wrong,” she giggled, throwing out a foot and hastily withdrawing it.
“I can find it, dear,” chanted the guest.
Miriam raised a flourishing hand. The crimsoned oval of Eve’s face appeared inverted above her own. She poked a finger into one of the dark eyes and looking at the screwed-up lid whispered voicelessly, “Make her play the Romance first and then
