She promised, and, after an hour’s scuffle hunting for the right gloves and finding that it was too windy for the hat I wanted to wear, I arrived at the Van Diemans’. It was rather late and I had had all the exercise I wanted coming along the dusty road. There were about fifteen people there, all running about after balls of different sizes and textures. I do not think that I am at heart a perfect lady, because I always see social festivities from the point of view of the servants. It was through the butler’s eyes that I saw his master and mistress and their guests employing their leisure: in my mind’s eye I carried the trays full of nourishment to help them prolong their activities and get the balls over nets and through hoops and into holes. Their ankles appeared to me absurdly thin, their bodies absurdly fat, their pleasure absurdly inadequate to the trouble they were taking. The sprawling creatures who played football on Saturday outside the village were just as grotesque in appearance, but their game had a little more of the pleasure of battle and a little less of kindergarten occupation than this. In an illustrated catalogue of parlour games there is one picture which shows an athletic footman putting away a jig-saw puzzle in a special cabinet, so designed that the pieces may remain undisturbed until the next fit of vacuity takes the fat lady in the low dress and her beautifully clean-shaven partner who, according to another picture, have been spending enraptured hours over a desiccated post card. There was some of this fatuousness in the Van Dieman games. “Look here,” said Mrs. Van Dieman when I had finished my fourth peach and was getting really happy and contented, thinking, indeed, that there was some point after all in being a bloated aristocrat, “if you won’t play at anything will you walk round the garden? You must do something; it isn’t good for you to sit still so long, and Mrs. Fortescue hasn’t seen the roses.” “Well,” I answered sleepily, “tell the fourth butler to bring them here and we will look at them.” “Nonsense,” said my determined hostess. “Get up and take her round; she says she is getting a chill.” There was no good in making a fuss, so I went and we strolled up and down the narrow path in the baking sun, jogging into each other in order to avoid treading on the border of pinks.