“Cousin Rachel, will you be quiet?”
She looked up at me again, and smiled.
“And another thing you can be quiet about is this nonsense of visiting everybody,” I said, “staying at the vicarage, staying at Pelyn. What is wrong with this house, and with my company?”
“Nothing, as yet.”
“Well, then…”
“I will stay until Seecombe becomes tired of me.”
“Seecombe has nothing to do with it,” I said, “nor Wellington nor Tamlyn, nor anyone at all.
I am the master here, and it has to do with me.”
“Then I must do as I am bid,” she answered; “that is part of a woman’s training too.”
I glanced at her suspiciously to see if she was laughing, but she was looking at her work and I could not see her eyes.
“Tomorrow,” I said, “I shall draw up a list of the tenants, in order of seniority. The ones who have served the family longest will be the first to be visited.
We will start with the Barton, as arranged on Saturday.
We will set forth at two o’clock every afternoon until there is not a single individual on the estate that you have not met.”
“Yes, Philip.”
“You will have to write a note of explanation to Mrs. Pascoe and those girls, explaining you are otherwise engaged.”
“I will do so tomorrow morning.”
“When we have finished with our own people, you will have to stay in the house three afternoons a week, I believe it is Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, in case you are called upon by the country.”
“How do you know the days?”
“Because I have heard them discussed often enough by the Pascoes and Louise.”
“I see.
And do I sit alone here in the drawing room, or do you sit with me, Philip?”
“You sit alone.
They will call upon you, not me.
Receiving the county is not part of a man’s work.”
“Supposing I am invited out to dinner, may I accept?”
“You will not be invited.
You are in mourning.
If there is any question of entertaining, we shall do it here.
But never more than two couples at a time.”
“Is that etiquette in this part of the world?” she asked.
“Etiquette be blowed,” I answered her.
“Ambrose and I never followed etiquette; we made our own.”
I saw her bend her head lower over her work, and I had a shrewd suspicion it was to hide laughter, though what she was laughing at I could not say.
I was not trying to be funny.
“I suppose,” she said, after a moment, “you would not care to draw up for me a little list of rules? A code of conduct?
I could study it here, while I am waiting to be called upon.
It would be very unfortunate if I made some social faux pas, according to your lights, and so disgraced myself.”
“You can say what you please, to whom you please,” I said; “all I ask is that you say it here, in the drawing room.
Never allow anyone to enter the library, under any pretext whatsoever.”
“Why?
What will be happening in the library?”
“I shall be sitting there. With my feet upon the mantel.”
“On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and on Fridays too?”
“Not on Thursdays.
On Thursdays I go into town to the bank.”
She held her skeins of silk closer to the candlesticks to examine the color, and then folded them and wrapped them in her work. She rolled the work into a bundle, and put it aside.
I glanced at the clock.
It was early yet.
Did she think of going upstairs so soon?
I had a sense of disappointment.