I was dipping down into the dingy underworld of the
contemporary state, and I liked it no better than I did my first dip
into it when I stayed with my Uncle Nicodemus Frapp at the bakery at
Chatham--where, by-the-by, we had to deal with cockroaches of a smaller,
darker variety, and also with bugs of sorts.
Let me confess that through all this time before we started I was
immensely self-conscious, and that Beatrice played the part of audience
in my imagination throughout. I was, as I say, "saving the situation,"
and I was acutely aware of that. The evening before we sailed, instead
of revising our medicine-chest as I had intended, I took the car and
ran across country to Lady Grove to tell my aunt of the journey I was
making, dress, and astonish Lady Osprey by an after dinner call.
The two ladies were at home and alone beside a big fire that seemed
wonderfully cheerful after the winter night. I remember the effect of
the little parlour in which they sat as very bright and domestic. Lady
Osprey, in a costume of mauve and lace, sat on a chintz sofa and played
an elaborately spread-out patience by the light of a tall shaded lamp;
Beatrice, in a whiteness that showed her throat, smoked a cigarette
in an armchair and read with a lamp at her elbow.
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