Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/278

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BRENDA’S SUMMER AT ROCKLEY

it’s bad for her head. Then she likes to drive with us. So we sit on the piazza and listen to the music. That’s about all there is to do. But a good many people come around and talk to you, and I must say they ’re very nice, and never try to make me remember I’m only sixteen. But then, of course, Edith and I are both rather tall for our age—and her clothes, well, really, they have just as much style as if she were eighteen. Her aunt Emmeline brought her stacks of things from Paris, and I don^t see why mamma did n’t have Agnes bring me one of those blue crepons. It would be just as suitable for me as for Edith.

It’s rather fun to watch them playing golf, although I’d rather watch than play this hot weather. Do you know, I’ve hardly set foot to the ground since I left home; and there’s some one to wait on me whenever I want anything, so that I shall be lazier than ever when I go back to Rockley. The other day we had a cruise as far as Portsmouth on the Windermere’s steam-yacht—the most perfect thing you ever saw—well, it was beyond my wildest dreams of what a yacht could be. Then we ’ve been out on Jim Rembrandt’s four-in-hand. We were the only girls of our age he asked, but then he’s a kind of a cousin of Edith’s, and he drove us over to his kennels at Wenham; you never saw such perfect little terriers, and hunting dogs,—well, he has a whole outfit, and I would n’t dare say how many men he keeps just to look after those dogs. Some way or other, when I saw the care he gave them, and heard how much money he spends on them, I couldn’t help thinking of those poor little children we saw that day in Boston—you remember—begging us for flowers. But I must say that Edith is good about flowers. She sends two great hampers twice a week to the flower mission. Sometimes they are hot-house flowers, for you know Mr. Blair’s conservatories here are almost as fine as those they have in Brookline.