Daisy's Aunt

"Yes, but they are not yours so much when they are growing," said Daisy. "I like them in my house, in my vases. Yes, I suppose I am greedy. Oh, I am going to enjoy myself these next few days. All the people I like best are coming, and they mostly like me best. That is such an advantage. Wouldn't it be awful to like somebody very much and find he didn't like you? What a degrading position! Oh dear, what a nice world!"

"More than usual?"

"Much more. I'm dreadfully happy inside. Don't you know how you can be immensely happy outside and not really be happy at all? But when you are happy inside you are happy altogether, and don't mind a wet day or going to the dentist's one scrap. Isn't it funny how one gets happy inside all in a moment? I suppose there is a cause for everything, isn't there? Ugh! there's an earwig. Oh, it's going your way, not mine. I wonder what the cause of earwigs is. I wish they would find it out and reason it away."

Gladys put an empty inverted teacup over the earwig.

"What made you happy inside?" she asked.

"Well, darling Aunt Alice started it two afternoons ago when we came back from the Zoo. I had a delightful talk, and she gave me some excellent advice. She quite realized that I wasn't exactly what most people would call being in love with him, but she advised me anyhow to make up my mind whether I would say 'yes' or 'no,' and recommended 'yes.' And so I did make up my mind, and the very next day, do you know, Gladys, when I dragged you away from the ball so early – "

"Because you had a headache," said Gladys, ruthlessly.

She had been enjoying herself, and still a little resented Daisy's imperious order to go away.

"You needn't rub it in, darling. Well, that very night something happened to me that frightened me at first. I began to feel quite differently about him."

Daisy got up quickly.

"I've been so dreadfully happy ever since," she said, "although sometimes I've felt quite miserable. Do you see the difference, or does it sound nonsense? Let me explain. I've only felt miserable, but I was happy. Gladys, I do believe it's It. It does make one feel so infinitesimal, and so immense."

Gladys looked up quickly at her cousin. Whatever It was, this was certainly a Daisy who was quite strange to her – Daisy with a strange, shy look in her eyes, half exulting in this new feeling, half ashamed of it.

"I hardly slept at all that night," she said, "and yet the night didn't seem in the least long. And I don't think I wanted to sleep except now and then when I felt miserable. And I believe it's the same thing that makes me feel miserable which makes me so happy. Gladys, I shall be so shy of him to-morrow when he comes here that he will probably think I'm in the sulks. And he's coming early probably, before any of the others – before lunch, in fact."

Gladys got up.

"Oh, Daisy, I don't think you ought to have arranged that," she said. "Do you mean he will find just you and me here?"

Daisy laughed.

"He needn't find you unless you like," she said. "And I didn't exactly arrange it. I told him you and I would be alone here, and he asked if he might get down early. I couldn't exactly forbid him; besides, darling, I didn't want to."

"Mother wouldn't like it," said Gladys.

"So please don't tell her," remarked Daisy. "I hate vexing people. She won't find out either. We shall go on the river or something, and come back after the rest of the people have arrived. You are so old-fashioned, Gladys; besides, it isn't certain that he will come. He only said he would if he could. But he is the sort of man who usually can when he wishes."

"I ought to tell mother," said Gladys.

"I know, but you won't."

Daisy laughed again, and then suddenly, without reason, her spirits fell.

"Oh dear, what a little beast I have been!" she said. "I did arrange that he should come, Gladys; at least, I made it imperative that he should ask if he might, and now it seems so calculating and cold-blooded. Girls like whom I used to be till – till about forty-eight hours ago are such brutes. They plot and scheme and entrap men. Pigs! I almost hope he won't come. I do, really. And yet that wouldn't do either, for it would look as if he had found me out and was disgusted with me. I believe you are all wrong, both you and Aunt Alice, and that he doesn't care for me in the least. He has flirted with half London. It isn't his fault; women have always encouraged him, just as I have done. What beasts we are!"

"Oh, well, come and pick boughs of laburnum," said Gladys. "Let's go and do something. We've been indoors all the afternoon."

"But I don't want to pick boughs of laburnum," said Daisy. "Why should we do the gardener's work? I want to cry."

"Very well, cry," said Gladys. "Oh, Daisy, I'm not a brute. I am so sorry you feel upset. But you know you are very happy; you have told me so. I should like to be immensely sympathetic, but you do change so quickly, I can't quite keep up. It must be very puzzling. Do you suppose everybody is like you when she falls in love?"

"And I wish I was dead," said Daisy, violently, having arrived at that dismal conclusion by some unspoken train of thought. "I wish I was a cow. I wish I was a boy."

"But you can't be a cow or a boy," said Gladys, gravely, "and you don't really wish you were dead."

Daisy suddenly had a fit of the giggles, which before long infected her cousin also, and they both lay back in their chairs in peals of helpless laughter. Now and then one or other would recover a little, only to be set off again by the temporarily hopeless case, and it was not till they had laughed themselves tired that the fit subsided.

Daisy mopped her streaming eyes.

"L-let's pick laburnum," she said at length. "How silly you are! But it would save such a lot of trouble to be a cow. If I laugh any more I shall be sick."

"Come into the garden, then," said Gladys. "Oh dear! I didn't mean that. Don't laugh again, Daisy; it does hurt so dreadfully."

CHAPTER XI

Whatever might prove to be the conduct of others, it seemed clear next morning that the weather meant to do all in its power to help Daisy to have a happy time, and another hot and cloudless day succeeded. The girls intended originally to lunch at one, since that gave a longer afternoon; but at one, since nobody had appeared, it seemed wiser to put off lunch till half-past, since that was the hour at which they lunched in London. Eventually they sat down alone to a meal even more belated. But at present nothing could touch or mar Daisy's happiness.

"It is much better that he shouldn't come," she said, with an air of decision. "I daresay Aunt Alice wouldn't like it, though it couldn't have been supposed to be my fault. Very likely his motor has broken down; he told me it usually did."

She laughed quite naturally; there was no sting in his absence.

"In fact, he told me he usually sent it on ahead," she said, "and started walking after it about half an hour later. In that way, by the time he arrived his chauffeur had generally put it to rights again, and he got in."

"Then he ought to be here in half an hour," remarked Gladys.

"Yes. Shall we have lunch kept cold for him? It would be hot by the time he arrived if we didn't. Oh, Gladys, I believe you are laughing at me. How horrid of you!"

"Not in the least. But I am rather glad he didn't come. I hate concealing things from mother."

Daisy put her nose in the air.

"Oh, you needn't have worried. He would have been quite certain to have told Aunt Alice himself."

"You didn't think of that yesterday," said Gladys.

"No. What disgusting salad! I believe it's made of turnip-tops. I'm very glad he didn't come to lunch."

"Men are so greedy about their food," said Gladys. "I don't mind what I eat."

"Evidently, since you can eat that. Oh, Gladys, I don't mean to be cross, but when you say things on purpose to annoy me it would be such bad manners in me not to appear to be annoyed. Do you think his motor has broken down? Fancy him tramping down the Bath road on a day like this! He hates walking unless he is going to kill something. He was charged by a rhinoceros once. If you try to shoot them and miss, they charge. How awfully tiresome of them! He killed it afterwards, though. It was quite close. You never heard anything so exciting."

Gladys laughed.

"Oh, Daisy," she said, "you told me that before, and you said it was so hard to know what to say if you didn't know a rhinoceros from a hippopotamus. And now you find it too exciting."

"Well, what then?" said Daisy, with dignity. "I think one ought to take an interest in all sorts of subjects. It is frightfully suburban only to be interested in what happens in your own parish. Somebody said that the world was his parish."

"I don't know what parish Grosvenor Square is in," said Gladys, parenthetically.