“When I get the chance I’ll have a word with Mrs King about Harriet, or maybe with Mr King, he’s the one for seeing things reasonably. It would be a wonderful thing for Lalla if you would allow Harriet to come back to tea sometimes after the skating. It would be such a treat for her to have someone to play with.”
“Harriet would love it, but I am afraid it is out of the question for some time yet. I’m afraid coming here and walking home will be about all she can manage. The extra walk to and from your house would be too much for her at present.”
“There wouldn’t be any walking. We’d send her home in the car. Mrs King drives her own nearly always, and Mr King his own, so the chauffeur’s got nothing to do except drive Lalla about in the little car.”
Olivia laughed.
“How very grand! I’m afraid I’ll never be able to ask you to our house. Three cars and a chauffeur! I’m certain Mrs King would have a fit if she saw how we lived.”
“Lot of foolishness. Harriet’s a nice little girl, and just the friend for Lalla. You leave it to me. Mrs King has her days, and I’ll pick a good one before I speak of Harriet to her or Mr King.”
Walking home Olivia asked Harriet how she had enjoyed skating. She noticed with happiness that Harriet was looking less like a daddy-long-legs than she had since her illness started.
“It was gorgeous, Mummy, but of course it was made gorgeous by Lalla. I do like her. I hope her Aunt Claudia will let me go to tea. Lalla’s afraid she won’t, and she’s certain she won’t let her come to tea with us.”
“You never know. Nana says she has her days, and she’s going to try telling her about you on one of her good days.”
Harriet said nothing for a moment. She was thinking about Lalla, Nana, and Aunt Claudia, and mixed up with thinking of them was thinking about telling her father, Alec, Toby and Edward about them. Suddenly she stood still.
“Mummy, mustn’t it be simply awful to be Lalla? Imagine going home every day with no one to talk to, except Nana, who knows what’s happened because she was there all the time. Wouldn’t you think to be only one like Lalla was the most awful thing that could happen to anybody?”
Olivia thought of the three cars and the chauffeur, and Lalla’s lovely clothes, and of the funny food they had to eat at home, and the shop that never paid. Then she thought of George and the boys, and the fun of hearing about Alec’s first day on the paper round, and how everybody would want to know about Harriet’s afternoon at the rink. Perhaps it was nicer to laugh till you were almost sick over the queer shop-leavings you had to eat, than to have the grandest dinner in the world served in lonely state to two people in a nursery. She squeezed Harriet’s hand.
“Awful. Poor Lalla, we must make a vow, Harriet. Aunt Claudia or no Aunt Claudia let’s make friends with Lalla.”
LALLA’S HOUSE WAS the exact opposite of Harriet’s house. It was not far away, but in a much grander neighbourhood. It was a charming, low, white house lying back in a big garden, with sloping lawns leading down to the river. Where the lawn and the river joined there was a little landing stage, to which, in the summer, Lalla’s Uncle David kept his motor launch tied. Lalla’s rooms were at the top of the house. A big, low room looking over the river, which had been her nursery, was now her schoolroom, and another big room next to it, which had been her night nursery, was now her bedroom. As well there was a room for Nana and a bathroom. Her bedroom was the sort of bedroom that most girls of her age would like to have. The carpet was blue and the bedspread and curtains white with wreaths of pink roses tied with blue ribbons on them, and there was a frill of the same material round her dressing-table. The only ugly thing in the room was the glass case over her bed in which the skates and boots in which her father was drowned were kept. The nicest skating boots in the world are not ornamental, and these, although they had been polished, looked as though someone had been drowned in them, for the black leather had got a brownish-green look. Underneath the case was a plaque which Aunt Claudia had put up. It had the name of Lalla’s father on it, the date on which he was born, and the date on which he was drowned, and underneath that he was the world’s champion figure skater. Above the case Aunt Claudia had put some words from the Bible: “Go, and do thou likewise.” This made people smile for it sounded rather as if Aunt Claudia meant Lalla to be drowned. Lalla did not care whether anybody smiled at the glass case or not, for she thought it idiotic keeping old skates and boots in the glass case, and knew from what Nana had told her that her father and mother would have thought it idiotic; in fact she was sure everybody thought it idiotic except Aunt Claudia.
The schoolroom, which Lalla sometimes forgot to call the schoolroom and called the nursery, was another very pretty room. It had a blue carpet and blue walls, lemon-yellow curtains and lemon-yellow seats to the chairs, and cushions to the window seats. It still had proper nursery things like Lalla’s rocking-horse and dolls’ house, and a toy cupboard simply bulging with toys, but as well it had low bookcases, full of books, pretty china ornaments, good pictures and a wireless set. The only things which did not go with the room were on a shelf which ran all down one wall; this was full of the silver trophies that her father had won. It is a very nice thing to win silver trophies, but a great many of them all together do not look pretty; the only time Lalla liked the trophies was at Christmas, because then she filled them with holly, and they looked gay. Although every trophy and medal had her father’s name on it, where he had won it, what for, and the date on which it had been won, Aunt Claudia was afraid Lalla might forget to read the inscriptions, which was sensible of her because Lalla certainly would not have read them, so underneath the whole length of the shelf was a quotation from Sir Walter Scott altered by Aunt Claudia to fit a girl by changing “his” and “him” into “her”. “Her square-turn’d joints and strength of limb, Show’d her no carpet knight so trim, But in close fight a champion grim.” When Aunt Claudia came to the nursery she would sometimes read the lines out loud in a very grand acting way. She hoped hearing them said like that would inspire Lalla to further effort, but all it did was to make Lalla decide that she would never read any book by Sir Walter Scott. Sometimes Lalla and Nana had a little joke about the verse; Lalla would jump out of her bed or her bath and fling herself on Nana saying “Her square-turn’d joints and strength of limb” and then she would butt Nana with her head and say “That butt never came from a carpet knight, did it?”
On the day that Lalla met Harriet she and Nana had an exceptionally gay tea. Nana had let Lalla do what she loved doing, which was kneeling by the fire making her own toast, instead of having it sent up hot and buttered from the kitchen, which meant the top slice had hardly any butter on it because it had run through to the bottom one. They talked about Harriet and the rink, Lalla in an excited way and Nana rather cautiously. Lalla laughed at Nana and said she was being “mimsy-pimsy” and asked if it was because she didn’t like the Johnsons. Nana shook her head.
“I liked them very much, dear; Mrs Johnson’s a real lady, as anyone can see, and little Harriet, for all she’s so shabby, has been brought up as a little lady should. But I don’t want you to go fixing your heart on having her here. You know what it is, your Aunt Claudia has got strict ideas of who you should know, and I don’t think, if she was to see Harriet, she would think she was your sort, not having the money to live as you do.” Nana could see this was going to make Lalla angry, so she added:“Now don’t answer back, dear, you know I’m speaking sense. I don’t think
