WaynfleteColeridge, Christabel R. (Christabel Rose)
General
Waynflete
Coleridge, Christabel R. (Christabel Rose)
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
She was never tired and never bored, she was ready to play tennis from
four till eight, and then, after supper, as was customary at Ingleby
parties, to dance from nine to twelve. She waltzed with Godfrey as
untiringly as if all her brains were in her feet. She made him coach
her up in all the ways of grouse shooting, and then she roused him to
fury, by wondering how long the barbaric desire to kill something would
survive in the English gentleman. She made much of Rawdie, till a
certain proverb occurred frequently to the mind of his master. But she
also went over the mills with Guy, and learned how to tell good wool
from bad, and what were the processes of conversion into broadcloth and
tweed. She picked his brains about her own special subjects, or his.
She had been writing an article on English musical instruments, she had
worked it all up from books, but there was a bit about music itself.
"What it does for humanity," she said; "as it does nothing for me, I
have to guess it all. You are musical, have I got it right? I don't
have these experiences, you know. There are such a splendid lot of
things to do and to think of, I can't tell how people have time for
feelings."
Guy was apparently as willing to discuss music as Godfrey to defend the
game laws, and it was impossible to say whether Constancy preferred his
languid, satirical courtesy and soft, preoccupied eyes, or Godfrey's
overflowing vitality, and look as of a vigorous young Viking, with his
exaggeration of the high, marked family features, and of the family
fairness, so that his old school nickname of "Towhead" was still
extremely appropriate. The rosy, round-faced Sarah Jane, who desired to
be called Jeanie, and blushed whenever Guy or Godfrey spoke to her, and
was always wondering how familiar she ought to be with so-called
cousins, looked on in amaze. When Constancy called Godfrey a
Philistine, Jeanie thought that a flippant allusion was being made to
Scripture characters, and when she talked of writing an article, as
simply as of making a pincushion, the allusion appeared as a social
_faux pas_ to Jeanie's idea of propriety. If Constancy was so unlucky
as to possess an unpopular taste, she had better have said nothing about
it. But the young men did not appear to be repelled, and were both of
them on most friendly terms with the visitor, while they regulated their
conduct to Jeanie with a propriety and skill which any chaperon might
have envied. They were aware of a crowded background of Palmer aunts
and cousins, and, though they did not think it becoming to make
objections to her introduction to the family, they were agreed on the
point of their relations towards her. Jeanie was a good little girl;
but she knew quite well which "cousin's" attention to Constancy meant as
she called it, "something particular;" she knew quite well which of the
two was the most interesting to herself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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