second pastime was her patience, that bond which knits together our
occidental civilization. She was always learning new patiences, and
always mixing them up with one another. This was another source of
annoyance to efficient nieces. "But that is not demon, Aunt Etta," they
would explain, playing patience severely from a sense of duty. She
cheated so persistently that there was no room for skill. "I can't
conceive why you play," they said crossly. But the reason was perfectly
clear. It stared one in the face. During the patience the clock had
moved from ten minutes past eight to twenty-five minutes to ten.

Henrietta also killed time now and then with sights; not churches or old
pictures, of course she never went near masterpieces now she had ample
leisure for seeing them, but Easter services, royal birthday
processions, or battles of flowers. As she seldom broke her routine of
idleness, these occasions excited her, not with pleasurable
anticipation, but with a nervous fluster that she might somehow miss
something; and the concierge, the porter, Madame, and the head-waiter,
would all be flying about the hotel half an hour before it was necessary
for her to start, sent on some perfectly useless errand connected with
her outing. If it rained, if something went wrong, how she grumbled. And
when she did see her show, it gave her very little pleasure. She had
not in the least a child's mind; she was not pleased by small events,
yet she grasped desperately after them, with an absurd, hazy idea that
she was defrauded of her rights, if she did not see them.

Another interest was an enormous collection of photographs of places,
which she had not cared for at the time, and could not in the least
remember; another her address-book of pensions and hotels, to which she
was always adding new volumes; above all, grumbling. Favourite subjects
were her kettle and her methylated spirits, whether the hotel would
allow her to take up milk and sugar from breakfast, whether the
chambermaid abstracted the biscuits she brought from dessert overnight.
Everyone who came in contact with Miss Symons found they were made to
listen to an endless story of a certain Elise who had stolen the
biscuits and substituted other ones that were quite four days old, and
of Elise's brazen behaviour when charged with the offence.

Her standard of comfort at a hotel was so impossible that she became an
object of terror and dislike to the waiters and chambermaids