It was no wonder she did not see the real care for her welfare, and thought this intensely cruel and unkind; but it was a great pity that she visited her vexation on poor Mrs. Lacy, to whom the game was even a greater penance than to herself, especially on a warm day, with a bad headache.
Even in her best days at home, Kate had resisted learning to take thought for others. She had not been considerate of Mary's toil, nor of Mr. Wardour's peace, except when Armyn or Sylvia reminded her; and now that she had neither of them to put it into her mind, she never once thought of her governess as one who ought to be spared and pitied. Yet if she had been sorry for Mrs. Lacy, and tried to spare her trouble and annoyance, how much irritability and peevishness, and sense of constant naughtiness, would have been prevented! And it was that feeling of being always naughty that was what had become the real dreariness of Kate's present home, and was far worse than the music, the battledore, or even the absence of fun.
At last came a message that Lady Caergwent was to be dressed for going out to make a call with Lady Barbara as soon as luncheon was over.
It could be on no one but the De la Poers; and Kate was so delighted, that she executed all manner of little happy hops, skips, and fidgets, all the time of her toilette, and caused many an expostulation of "Mais, Miladi!" from Josephine, before the pretty delicate blue and white muslin, worked white jacket, and white ribboned and feathered hat, were adjusted. Lady Barbara kept her little countess very prettily and quietly dressed; but it was at the cost of infinite worry of herself, Kate, and Josephine, for there never was a child whom it was so hard to keep in decent trim. Armyn's old saying, that she ought to be always kept dressed in sacking, as the only thing she could not spoil, was a true one; for the sharp hasty movements, and entire disregard of where she stepped, were so ruinous, that it was on the records of the Bruton Street household, that she had gone far to demolish eight frocks in ten days.
However, on this occasion she did get safe down to the carriage-- clothes, gloves, and all, without detriment or scolding; and jumped in first. She was a long way yet from knowing that, though her aunts gave the first place to her rank, it would have been proper in her to yield it to their years, and make way for them.
She was too childish to have learnt this as a matter of good breeding, but she might have learnt it of a certain parable, which she could say from beginning to end, that she should "sit not down in the highest room."
Her aunt sat down beside her, and spent the first ten minutes of the drive in enjoining on her proper behaviour at Lady de la Poer's. The children there were exceedingly well brought up, she said, and she was very desirous they should be her niece's friends; but she was certain that Lady de la Poer would allow no one to associate with them who did not behave properly.
"Lord de la Poer was very kind to me just as I was," said Kate, in her spirit of contradiction, which was always reckless of consequences.
"Gentlemen are no judges of what is becoming to a little girl," said Lady Barbara severely. "Unless you make a very different impression upon Lady de la Poer, she will never permit you to be the friend of her daughters."
"I wonder how I am to make an impression," meditated Kate, as they drove on; "I suppose it would make an impression if I stood up and repeated, 'Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!' or something of that sort, as soon as I got in. But one couldn't do that; and I am afraid nothing will happen. If the horses would only upset us at the door, and Aunt Barbara be nicely insensible, and the young countess show the utmost presence of mind! But nothing nice and like a book ever does happen. And after all, I believe that it is all nonsense about making impressions. Thinking of them is all affectation; and one ought to be as simple and unconscious as one can." A conclusion which did honour to the countess's sense. In fact, she had plenty of sense, if only she had ever used it for herself, instead of for the little ladies she drew on her quires of paper.
Lady Barbara had started early, as she really wished to find her friends at home; and accordingly, when the stairs were mounted, and the aunt and niece were ushered into a pretty bright-looking drawing- room, there they found all that were not at school enjoying their after-dinner hour of liberty with their father and mother.
Lord de la Poer himself had the youngest in his arms, and looked very much as if he had only just scrambled up from the floor; his wife was really sitting on the ground, helping two little ones to put up a puzzle of wild beasts; and there was a little herd of girls at the farther corner, all very busy over something, towards which Kate's longing eyes at once turned--even in the midst of Lord de la Poer's very kind greeting, and his wife's no less friendly welcome.
It was true that, as Lady Barbara had said, they were all exceedingly well-bred children. Even the little fellow in his father's arms, though but eighteen months old, made no objection to hold out his fat hand graciously, and showed no shyness when Lady Barbara kissed him! and the others all waited quietly over their several occupations, neither shrinking foolishly from notice, nor putting themselves forward to claim it. Only the four sisters came up, and took their own special visitor into the midst of them as their own property; the elder of them, however, at a sign from her mamma, taking the baby in her arms, and carrying him off, followed by the other two small ones- -only pausing at the door for him to kiss his little hand, and wave it in the prettiest fashion of baby stateliness.
The other sisters drew Kate back with them into the room, where they had been busy. Generally, however much she and Sylvia might wish it, they had found acquaintance with other children absolutely impossible in the presence of grown-up people, whose eyes and voices seemed to strike all parties dumb. But these children seemed in no wise constrained: one of them said at once, "We are so glad you are come. Mamma said she thought you would before we went out, one of those days."
"Isn't it horrid going out in London?" asked Kate, at once set at ease.
"It is not so nice as it is at home," said one of the girls; laughing; "except when it is our turn to go out with Mamma."
"She takes us all out in turn," explained another, "from Fanny, down to little Cecil the baby--and that is our great time for talking to her, when one has her all alone."
"And does she never take you out in the country?"
"Oh yes! but there are people staying with us then, or else she goes out with Papa. It is not a regular drive every day, as it is here."
Kate would not have had a drive with Aunt Barbara every day, for more than she could well say. However, she was discreet enough not to say so, and asked what they did on other days.
"Oh, we walk with Miss Oswald in the park, and she tells us stories, or we make them. We don't tell stories in the country, unless we have to walk straight along the drives, that, as Papa says, we may have some solace."
Then it was explained that Miss Oswald was their governess, and that they were very busy preparing for her birth-day. They were making a paper-case for her, all themselves, and this hour was their only time for doing it out of her sight in secret.
"But why do you make it yourselves?" said Kate; "one can buy such beauties at the bazaars."
"Yes; but Mamma says a present one has taken pains to make, is worth a great deal more than what is only bought; for trouble goes for more than money."
"But one can make nothing but nasty tumble-to-pieces things," objected Kate.
"That depends," said Lady Mary, in a very odd merry voice; and the other two, Adelaide and Grace, who were far too much alike for Kate to guess which was which, began in a rather offended manner to assure her that THEIR paper-case was to be anything but tumble-to-pieces. Fanny was to bind it, and Papa had promised to paste its back and press it.