Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/29

Rh "There is no reason why it should not be played," said Elizabeth, "in the frosts. I was saying when you interrupted me, that unless you prefer to have the lawn looking like an abandoned cabbage patch in an allotment, when we entertain our friends, it would be better not to have it continually trampled down and run about on just before. Not to mention the decimation of such flowers as there are by the search for balls, and the loss of balls even when they are searched for. That is another point: you bought Lucia a set of new balls last year, and I see you have bought her another set to-day."

"They are a birthday present, Elizabeth," said Cathie.

"Indeed. May I ask what they cost?"

"Twelve shillings. It isn't extravagant. They last longer than the cheap ones."

Elizabeth took up her paper again with a little shiver.

"The kettle-holder you gave me on my last birthday is most useful to me, Catherine," she observed in a faltering voice.

These were the things that Catherine thought over as she looked at the unpromising flower-bed, and the lawn which beyond all denying showed traces of trampled usage. But it was chiefly Elizabeth's unkindness that occupied her, and the worst thing about Elizabeth's unkindness was that it always sprang from solid facts. She never imagined grievances: she took the bare bones of existence and held them up before you in their mere crude hardness of outline. It was perfectly true, for instance, that Johnson was a most incompetent gardener, besides being of almost patriarchal age; it was true also that Catherine's present to Elizabeth on her last birthday had been a kettle-holder, and a remarkably cheap one too; it was true also that she had given Lucia a set of lawn-tennis balls that cost twelve shillings. But somehow when Elizabeth did no more than state these facts without comment of any kind, it was not only Elizabeth who seemed unkind, but Cathie's own conduct that seemed unkind likewise.

"And I'm not unkind," she said to herself, in truculent bass undertones.

To have looked at her, to have talked with her, except under favourable circumstances to have even lived in the house with her, would not have convinced any of quite average intelligence that Catherine was of gentle heart and, so to speak, of a defenceless nature. She looked, as Elizabeth was, as hard as nails, and