four o'clock, my amateur servants all went out for a ride,
and left me in peace for a couple of hours. I had enough to do during
that short time to tidy up; to collect the scattered books and music,
and prepare the tea-supper, for which they came back in tearing spirits,
and frantically hungry, between seven and eight o'clock. After this meal
had been cleared away, and Mr. U---- and I had washed up (the others
declaring they were too tired to stir), we all used to adjourn to the
verandah. It happened to be an exceptionally _still_ week, no dry, hot
nor'-westers, nor cold, wet sou'-westers, and it was perfectly delicious
to sit out in the verandah and rest, after the labours of the day,
in our cane easy-chairs. The balmy air was so soft and fresh, and the
intense silence all around so profound. Unfortunately there was a full
moon. I say "unfortunately," because the flood of pale light suggested
to these dreadful young men the feasibility of having what they called
a "servant's ball." In vain I declared that the housekeeper was never
expected to dance. "Oh, yes!" laughed Captain George. "I've often danced
with a housekeeper, and very jolly it was too. Come along! F----, _make_
her dance." And I was forced to gallopade up and down that verandah till
I felt half dead with fatigue. The boards had a tremendous spring, and
the verandah (built by F----, by the way), was very wide and roomy, so
it made an excellent ball-room. As for the trifling difficulty about
music, that was supplied by Captain George and Mr. U---- whistling in
turn, time being kept by clapping the top and bottom of my silver butter
dish together, cymbal-wise. Oh, dear! It takes my breath away now even
to think of those evenings! I see Alice A---- flitting about in her
white dress and fern-leaf wreath, dancing like the slender sylph she
really was, but never can I forget the odd effect of the gentlemen's
feet! No one had their dress boots up at the station, and as Alice and
I firmly declined to dance with anybody who wore "Cookham" boots (great
heavy things with nails in the soles), they had no other course open to
them except to wear their smart slippers. There were slippers of purple
velvet, embroidered with gold; others of blue kid, delicately traced in
crimson lines; foxes heads stared at us in startling perspective from a
scarlet ground; or black jim-crow figures disported themselves on orange
tent-stitch. Then these slippers were all more or less of an eas