Complete Works. Anna Buchan
Watsons were asked to The Rigs, and to their unbounded satisfaction spent a most genial hour in the company of Miss Reston, whose comings and goings they had watched with breathless interest from behind the elegant sash curtain of Balmoral. On their way home they borrowed a copy of Debrett and studied it all evening.
It was very confusing at first, but at last they ran their quarry to earth. "Here she is … She's the daughter (dau. must mean daughter) of Quintin John, 10th Baron Bidborough. And this'll be her brother, Quintin Reginald Feurbras—what names! Teenie, her mother was an earl's daughter!"
"Oh, mercy!" wailed Miss Teenie, quite overcome.
"Yes, see here. 6th Earl of Champertoun—a Scotch earl too! Lady Ann was her name. Fancy that now!"
"And her so pleasant!" said Miss Teenie.
"It just lets you see," said Miss Watson, "the higher up you get in the social scale, the pleasanter and freer people are. You see, they've been there so long they're accustomed to it; their position never gives them a thought: it's the people who have climbed up who keep on wondering if you're noticing how grand they are."
"Well, Agnes," said Miss Teenie, "it's a great rise in the world for you and me to be asked to tea with an earl's granddaughter. There's no getting over that. I'm thinking we'll need to polish up our manners. I've an awful habit of drinking my tea with my mouth full. It seems more natural somehow to give it a synd down than to wait to drink till your mouth's empty."
"Of course it's more natural," said her sister, "but what's natural's never refined. That's a queer thing when you think of it."
The Miss Watsons called on all their friends in the next few days, and did not fail to mention in each house, accidentally, as it were, that on Wednesday they expected to take tea with Miss Reston, and led on from that fact to glowing details of Miss Reston's ancestry.
The height of their satisfaction was reached when they happened to meet Mrs. Duff-Whalley, who, remembering yeoman service rendered by the sisters at a recent bazaar, stopped them and, greatly condescending, said, "Ah, er—Miss Watson—I'm asking a few local ladies to The Towers on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the subject of a sale of work for the G.F.S. A cup of tea, you understand, and a friendly chat in my own drawing-room You will both join us, I hope?" Her tone held no doubt of their delighted acceptance, but Miss Watson, who had suffered much from Mrs. Duff-Whalley, who had been made use of and then passed unnoticed, taken up when needed and dropped, replied with great deliberation, "Oh, thank you, but we are going to tea with Miss Reston that afternoon. I dare say we shall hear from someone what is decided about the sale of work."
The epoch-making Wednesday dawned at last.
Great consultations had gone on between The Rigs and Hillview how best to make it an enjoyable occasion. Pamela wanted Jean to be present, but Jean thought it better not to be. "It would take away from the glory of the occasion. I'm only a chota Miss, and they are too accustomed to me. Ask Mrs. Jowett. She wouldn't call on the Watsons—the line must be drawn somewhere even by the gentle Mrs. Jowett—but she will be very sweet and nice to them. And Miss Mary Dawson. She is such a kind, comfortable presence in a room—I think that would be a nice little party."
Pamela obediently promised to do as Jean suggested.
"I've sent to Fullers' for some cakes, though I don't myself consider them a patch on the Priorsford cakes, but they will be a change and make it more of an occasion. Mawson can make delicious sandwiches and Bella Bathgate has actually offered to bake some scones. I'll make the room look as smart as possible with flowers."
"You've no photographs of relations? They would like photographs better than anything."
"People they never heard of before," cried Pamela. "What an odd taste! However, I'll do what I can."
By 11 a.m. the ladies in Balmoral had laid out all they meant to wear—skirts spread neatly on beds, jackets over chair-backs, even to the very best handkerchiefs on the dressing-table waiting for a sprinkle of scent.
At two o'clock they began to dress.
Miss Teenie protested against this disturbance of their afternoon rest, but her sister was firm.
"It'll take me every minute of the time, Teenie, for I've all my underclothing to change."
"But, mercy me, Miss Reston'll not see your underclothes!"
"I know that, but when you've on your very best things underneath you feel a sort of respect for yourself, and you're better able to hold your own in whatever company you're in. I don't know what you mean to do, but I'm going to change to the skin."
Miss Teenie nearly always followed the lead of her elder sister, so she meekly went off to look out and air her most self-respecting under garments, though she protested, "Not half aired they'll be, and as likely as not I'll catch my death," and added bitterly, "It's not all pleasure knowing the aristocracy."
They were ready to the last glove-button half an hour before the time appointed, and sat stiffly on two high chairs in their little dining-room. "I think," said Miss Watson, "we'd be as well to think on some subjects to talk on. We must try to choose something that'll interest Miss Reston. I wish I knew more about the Upper Ten."
"I'd better not speak at all," said Miss Teenie, who by this time was in a very bad temper. "I never could mind the names of the Royal Family, let alone the aristocracy. I always thought there was a weakness about the people who liked to read in the papers and talk about those kind of folk. I'm sure when I do read about them they're always doing something kind of indecent, like getting divorced. It seems to me they never even make an attempt to be respectable."
She looked round the cosy room and thought how pleasant it would have been if she and her sister had been sitting down to tea as usual, with no need to think of topics. It had been all very well to tell their obviously surprised friends where they were going for tea, but when it came to the point she would infinitely have preferred to stay at home.
"She'll not likely have any notion of a proper tea," Miss Watson said. "Scraps of thin bread and butter, mebbe, and a cake, so don't you look disappointed Teenie, though I know you like your tea. Just toy with it, you know."
"No, I don't know," said Miss Teenie crossly. "I never 'toyed' with my tea yet, and I'm not going to begin. It'll likely be China tea anyway, and I'd as soon drink dish-water."
Miss Watson looked bitterly at her sister.
"You'll never rise in the world, Teenie, if you can't give up a little comfort for the sake of refinement Fancy making a fuss about China tea when it's handed to you by an earl's granddaughter."
Miss Teenie made no reply to this except to burst—as was a habit of hers—into a series of violent sneezes, at which her sister's wrath broke out.
"That's the most uncivilised sneeze I ever heard. If you do that before Miss Reston, Teenie, I'll be tempted to do you an injury."
Miss Teenie blew her nose pensively. "I doubt I've got a chill changing my underclothes in the middle of the day, but 'a little pride and a little pain,' as my mother used to say when she screwed my hair with curl-papers…. I suppose it'll do if we stay an hour?"
Things are rarely as bad as we anticipate, and, as it turned out, not only Miss Watson, but the rebellious Miss Teenie, looked back on that tea-party as one of the pleasantest they had ever taken part in, and only Heaven knows how many tea-parties the good ladies had attended in their day.
They were judges of china and fine linen, and they looked appreciatively at the table. There were the neatest of tea-knives, the daintiest of spoons, jam glowed crimson through crystal, butter was there in a lordly dish, cakes from London, delicate sandwiches, Miss Bathgate's best and lightest in the way of scones, shortbread crisp from the oven of Mrs. M'Cosh.
And here was Miss Reston looking lovely and exotic in a wonderful tea-frock, a class of garment hitherto unknown to the Miss Watsons, who thrilled at the sight. Her welcome was so warm that it seemed to the guests, accustomed to the thus-far-and-no-further manner of the Priorsford great ladies, almost exuberant. She led