The Career of Katherine Bush. Glyn Elinor
and Fred and Bert, and the whole crew of you, measure everything with your own tiny measure. You make me gasp at your outlook sometimes."
Matilda bridled – and Katherine went on.
"Lady Garribardine's house does not seem to be a bit grand to her, nor to any of the people who come there. They are not conscious of it; it is just everyday to them, although some of them live in quite small houses themselves and aren't at all rich. She has two cousins – elderly ladies, who live in a tiny flat – but oh! the difference in it to Mabel's villa! I had to take them a message last week and waited in their mite of a drawing-room – it was exquisitely clean and simple, and they are probably poorer than we are."
Matilda felt too ruffled to continue this conversation; she always hated the way Katherine argued with her; she wanted to get back to the far more interesting subject of carpets and curtains and arrangements in the rooms of Lady Garribardine's house. Numbers of the people in her serials, of course, were supposed to own such places, and she had often seen bits of them on the stage, but until she found Katherine really lived now in one, somehow she had never believed in them as living actualities, or rather their reality had not been brought home to her. So she questioned Katherine, and soon had an accurate description of her ladyship's bedroom, and the rest of the house, then she got back to the happenings of her sister's day.
"Well, when you have got up there, you take down orders, and then?"
"I sort everything that has come by the post and mark on the envelopes how I am to answer them, and I sometimes read her the papers aloud if her eyes are tired."
"Yes?"
"And then I go down and write the letters; she hardly ever answers any herself, and I have to write them as if I were she. Her friends must wonder how her hand and style have changed since Miss Arnott left!"
Here was something thrilling again for Matilda.
"Oh, my! What a lot you must get to know about the smart set, Kitten; isn't it interesting!"
"Yes, as I told you, I am learning lessons."
"Oh, bother that! Well, what do they write about, do tell me – ?"
"All sorts of things; their movements, their charities – invitations, little witticisms about each other – politics, the last good story – and, some of them, books."
"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 circumstantial set of statements, as all accounts passed 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 muffins 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."
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