ed archways, gold-framed
landscapes, overmantels, a dining-room sideboard like a palace with
a large Tantalus, and electric light fittings of a gay and expensive
quality. There was a fine billiard-room on the ground floor with three
comfortable sofas and a rotating bookcase containing an excellent
collection of the English and American humorists from THREE MEN IN
A BOAT to the penultimate Mark Twain. There was also a conservatory
opening out of the dining-room, to which the gardener brought potted
flowers in their season....

My aunt was a little woman with a scared look and a cap that would
get over one eye, not very like my mother, and nearly eight years her
junior; she was very much concerned with keeping everything nice, and
unmercifully bullied by my two cousins, who took after their father and
followed the imaginations of their own hearts. They were tall, dark,
warmly flushed girls handsome rather than pretty. Gertrude, the eldest
and tallest, had eyes that were almost black; Sibyl was of a stouter
build, and her eyes, of which she was shamelessly proud, were dark blue.
Sibyl's hair waved, and Gertrude's was severely straight. They treated
me on my first visit with all the contempt of the adolescent girl for a
boy a little younger and infinitely less expert in the business of life
than herself. They were very busy with the writings of notes and certain
mysterious goings and comings of their own, and left me very much to
my own devices. Their speech in my presence was full of unfathomable
allusions. They were the sort of girls who will talk over and through an
uninitiated stranger with the pleasantest sense of superiority.

I met them at breakfast and at lunch and at the half-past six o'clock
high tea that formed the third chief meal of the day. I heard them
rattling off the compositions of Chaminade and Moskowski, with great
decision and effect, and hovered on the edge of tennis foursomes
where it was manifest to the dullest intelligence that my presence was
unnecessary. Then I went off to find some readable book in the place,
but apart from miscellaneous popular novels, some veterinary works, a
number of comic books, old bound volumes of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS
and a large, popular illustrated History of England, there was very
little to be found. My aunt talked to me in a casual feeble way, chiefly
about my mother's last illness. The two had seen very little of each
other for many years; she made no secret