Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/88

 "Some mornings we got up early and rode. We sailed and swam with John Marple, who's fourteen now, and Frances, who's turning pretty after an ugly duckling start and who has two fascinating big gaps waiting for a pair of belated second teeth. I spent long afternoons in the woods with books I'd saved up to read and then couldn't be bothered, and long evenings talking to Mr. Marple about the days when you used to have a carriage and a coachman. There were a few guests, variegated Marples and Pearns and Scantleberries—though not Sophie, who's in Quebec,—and Alcie Pender, a doughy girl whom Rhoda is turning into celluloid so she won't sag, nor keep getting crushes on Jewish violinists. All very domestic and quiet.

"It's a mew experience to have everything unobtrusively done for you, to come down to breakfast on a porch that overlooks acres and acres of lawn falling away toward a sea framed by evergreens and sounding pleasantly of crickets and lawn-mowers, to find your bath and your clothes staring you in the face when you come up before dinner, to have invisible slaves put stamps on your letters and waft them away. All my life postage stamps have been my despair. At home, as you remember, nobody ever wafted away anything, unless complained at, or ever brought anything back that you really wanted; nobody remembered what day it was and the calendar was last year's, and