Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/55

Rh again with a cup of milk, and a sufficiency of bread and butter, hoping to regain the privacy of her room without discovery.

Aunt Elizabeth was somewhat near-sighted, and as she crossed the hall again after her predatory visit to the dining-room, she did not observe that at this particular moment Lucia was just about to enter through the glass-door leading from the garden. Indeed, the poor lady was otherwise occupied, for some malignant wandering sprite from the hawthorn which her niece had brought in from her morning's walk suddenly assailed her nose, and she had barely time to set down her cup of milk on the stairs and stifle her face in her handkerchief before she was again shaken by those odious convulsions, and as for the piece of bread and butter she had taken with her, it flew from its plate with incredible violence and pitched (luckily butter upwards) on the landing six stairs higher. Then, indeed, she glanced hastily at the garden-door and at the door of the writing-room, and she still seemed to be unobserved. Lucia, in fact, had swiftly retreated into the garden again, and, had her aunt known, was biting her handkerchief in an agony of suppressed laughter, for the parabola described by the bread and butter was of a legitimately humorous character. Also she expected developments at lunch.

Elizabeth felt better after her milk and bread and butter, but still very much ill-used. She had had two spasms of hay fever, egg had been plastered into the dining-room carpet, and Catherine no doubt had taken the morning paper to the writing-room, so that unless she abandoned her role of fasting invalid, she would be without employment till lunch, since she had no book of any description in her bedroom. But to her the fact of appearing ill-used was more vital than the inconvenience of feeling so, and since she no longer felt the inclination to close her eyes, she looked out of the window, discreetly hidden behind the fringe of her blind, which she had drawn down. Lucia was in the garden, walking up and down the gravel path, and reading some book. Before long Catherine joined her with the paper, which Elizabeth so much wanted, in her hand. This she laid down on a garden-seat, and the two held consultation over the flower-beds. There was a breeze even in the brick-confines that morning, and presently the paper began to stir and flutter. Soon a leaf of it fell on to the lawn.

This was too much; she rang the bell, and lay down on her sofa.

"Jane," she said faintly, when it was answered, "please ask