But that was only a tale, and this is true. I shall read bits out to you. It’s the sort of book that simply asks to be read aloud.”
Barbara passed her cousin a skein of wool. “Hold that for me, will you, while I wind? . . . Most of our time I suppose will be spent in this way, working a little, reading a little, talking, writing letters . . .”
“Yes,” said Nicole, “I hope so. I do love a routine, doing the same thing at the same time every day. We shan’t ever have to go out in the evenings now, so we’ll have ample time to read and meditate. . . . I mean to read all Trollope. I’ve never had time before to settle to him. . . . Isn’t it odd to sit here in this little house—we three—and not know anything whatever about the people who live round us. We who have always known every one for miles round!”
“Dear,” said her mother, “Aunt Constance wants to know if you would like her to write to friends of hers—Erskine, I think is the name—who live not very far from Kirkmeikle.”
Nicole bounded in her seat at the suggestion.
“Oh, Mother, beg her not to. Think what a disaster! Those Erskines would feel they had to come motoring over and invite us, and we would meet their friends, and before we knew where we were we would be in a vortex and all our beautiful peace smashed.”
“Nonsense,” Barbara said, impatiently tweaking the wool. “Do hold it straight, or how can I wind? Of course we want to know the Erskines. It will make all the difference.”
“It’s so like Aunt Constance to have friends in every out-of-the-way nook and cranny!” Nicole grumbled. “I thought we’d be safe here.”
Barbara finished winding her ball, and said severely:
“You know quite well that there is no one here we could possibly be friends with.”
“Isn’t there, haughty aristocrat? Well, I can’t keep myself to myself. I want to know everybody there is to know, butcher and baker and candlestick-maker. Yes, even the people who live in the smart villas. The Erskines would be exactly like all the people we have always known. Now that we are different I want to know different sort of people.”
“How are we different?” Barbara asked sharply.
“We’ve come down in the world,” her cousin told her solemnly.
“Ridiculous! Aunt Jane, isn’t she horrid? Surely you don’t want me to make friends with all and sundry?”
Lady Jane laughed. “I certainly think with you that we should get to know the Erskines, but it’s pleasant to live on good terms with all our neighbours.”
“Of course it is,” Barbara agreed, “if we stop there, but Nicole never knows where to draw the line. She gets so disgustingly familiar with every one—I sometimes think she’s a born Radical.”
“What a thing to say about the Vice-President of the Tweeddale Conservative Association! Well, you make friends with these Erskines, Bab, and I’ll confine my attentions to Kirkmeikle. I know I was born expansive. I can’t help it, and really it makes life much better fun. And, Mums, you will sit here and watch the game, and entertain first Bab’s friends then mine. It will be as entertaining as a circus.”
“I wonder,” said Lady Jane. “I wonder!”
CHAPTER IX
“Young fresh folkes, he and she.”
Chaucer.
Barbara had once said of Nicole, and said it rather bitterly, that she might start on a journey to London, alone in a first-class carriage, but before her destination was reached she would have made the acquaintance of half the people in the train. An exaggerated statement, but with a grain of truth in it. There was something about Nicole that made people offer her their confidence. Perhaps they saw sympathy and understanding in her eyes, perhaps they recognised in her what Mr. Chesterton calls “that thirst for things as humble, as human, as laughable, as that daily bread for which we cry to God.”
Certainly she found entertainment in whatever she heard or saw, and never came in, even from a walk on the moors round Rutherfurd, without something to relate. An excellent mimic, she made people live when she repeated their sayings, and “Nikky’s turns,” had been very popular with her father and brothers. Nowadays her recitals were not quite so gay: her mother and Barbara laughed, to be sure, but there was something wanting. However, as Nicole often told herself, the world was still not without its merits.
It was not likely that in such a small community as Kirkmeikle the Rutherfurds would be neglected, and, indeed, every one had called at once: the minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert; the doctor and his sister—Kilgour was their name; Mrs. Heggie dragging her unwilling daughter; Mr. and Mrs. Buckler, and Miss Symington. But they all called very correctly between three and four, and found no one in, for the new inmates of the Harbour House took long walks every afternoon to explore the neighbourhood.
Barbara took up the cards that were lying one day and read aloud the names:
“Mrs. Heggie, Knebworth.
“Miss Symington, Ravenscraig.
“Mr. and Mrs. Buckler, Lucknow.”
Then, flicking the cards aside, she said: “How ghastly they sound! we’d better not return the calls for ages; we don’t want to land ourselves in a morass of invitations.”
“A morass of invitations,” Nicole repeated. “ ‘Morass’ is good. Each step taken, that is, each invitation accepted, leading you on until you get stuck deeper and deeper in the society of Kirkmeikle. . . . But what makes you think they would want to entertain us so extensively? It would only be tea—and that’s soon over.”
“Luncheon,” said Barbara gloomily; “perhaps dinner.”
“Well, even if they did! There are so few of them, we’d soon get through with it.”
“Yes, but we’d have to ask them back.”
“Why not?” Nicole asked. “Mrs. Martin would give them a very good dinner, and Mother would entertain them with her justly famous charm of manner; and you and I are not without a certain pleasing . . . I can’t think what word I want.”
Barbara shrugged her shoulders. “Personally, I have no desire to impress the natives. The names of their houses are enough for me. . . . Aunt Jane, have you fixed on the pattern of chintz you want? I’d better write before the post goes.”
The next day came a breath of winter. The quiet dry weather that had prevailed for some time vanished, hail spattered like shot against the long windows, a wild wind tore down the narrow street and whistled in the chimneys, while white horses raced up the beach and threw spray high over the wall.
After luncheon Nicole came into the drawing-room with a waterproof hat pulled well down over her face, and a burberry buttoned up round her throat, and announced that she was going out.
“My dear, on such a day!” her mother expostulated.
“I’m
