When I think of her at
Beckenham, I always think first of her as dressed in that blue cotton
stuff she affected, with her arms in huge gauntleted gardening gloves, a
trowel in one hand and a small but no doubt hardy and promising annual,
limp and very young-looking and sheepish, in the other.
Beckenham, in the persons of a vicar, a doctor's wife, and a large proud
lady called Hogberry, "called" on my uncle and aunt almost at once, so
soon in fact as the lawn was down again, and afterwards my aunt made
friends with a quiet gentlewoman next door, a propos of an overhanging
cherry tree and the need of repairing the party fence. So she resumed
her place in society from which she had fallen with the disaster of
Wimblehurst. She made a partially facetious study of the etiquette of
her position, had cards engraved and retaliated calls. And then she
received a card for one of Mrs. Hogberry's At Homes, gave an old garden
party herself, participated in a bazaar and sale of work, and was really
becoming quite cheerfully entangled in Beckenham society when she was
suddenly taken up by the roots again by my uncle and transplanted to
Chiselhurst.
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