Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/13

Rh "I thought the last act was rather dull," said Maud.

"Then you're just as bad. You are blasée, darling: I think most people are blasés. That I can't understand. Nobody who has a plan should be blasé. And as long as one has any interest in life one has a plan. I have several."

Maud moved from the window-seat and lit the two bedroom candles that had been brought in.

"Let's go up to your room," she said, "and have a hair-brush talk. Or shall we go to my room?"

Lucia made a little impatient movement.

"Oh, let's stop here," she said. "I hate talking in bedrooms. My plans are not bedroom plans. They are much more connected with drawing-rooms and balls and life and movement. I'm not domestic, you know. At least I want my domestic arrangements to be on a particularly large scale. Yes, I dare say I sound as if I was a little intoxicated. Well, so I am; this delightful whirl of a week up in town has gone to my head. However, you need not be alarmed for me. It isn't going to become a habit. You see to-morrow I go home, back to the cold-water cure. Dear me, the very thought of it sobers me at once."

An elderly and discreet man-servant, Don Whiskers, to whom allusion has been made, came into the room, with the evident intention of putting out the lights before himself going to bed. A shade of reserved disapproval crossed his face when he saw it was still occupied, and he withdrew again, not, however, quite closing the door, as if to convey a subtle hint that it was really not worth while to do so at this time of the night. The hint was not lost on Maud.

"That's the third time Parker has come in," she said to Lucia. "Perhaps we had better go upstairs, if you don't mind. Mother doesn't like the servants being kept up late."

Lucia got up at once, stifling an impatient little sigh. What were servants for, except to serve you? Instead of which, Mrs. Eddis' plan seemed to her to be one long effort of arranging the day to please them, and so order her movements that they should be put to no inconvenience of any kind, and in particular do nothing that they could think strange or irregular. An instance in point was that the two girls had just supped on cocoa and sandwiches, though the night was hot, because it was thought in the kitchen that cocoa and sandwiches were the proper refreshments to take after a theatre. Mrs. Flagstaff, the cook, who had been with Mrs. Eddis for fifteen years, was accustomed to send up