A Country House Christmas by Phyllis Elinor Sandeman

Author:Phyllis Elinor Sandeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911358169
Publisher: Pavilion Books
Published: 2016-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

Lady

The children were rather silent at supper, Alethea a little weary, Hilda and Phyllis thinking of to-morrow night when they would not be sitting up here with Fräulein but dressed in their best, forming part of the festive gathering downstairs.

There would be additional guests in the persons of Canon and Mrs. Waldegrave and Mr. Hunt, the curate.

Canon Waldegrave was a tall, beautiful old man with a Grecian profile and a white beard. When seated meditatively under the east window in the chancel whilst Mr. Hunt occupied the pulpit (it was his custom to leave his curate to preach the sermon almost every Sunday) he was the embodiment of Phyllis’s idea of an ancient Druid, though in reality much more like a Greek philosopher. Mrs. Waldegrave was a little scrap of a woman always dressed in black with a large lace cap.

The place of assembly before meals was the library—the least beautiful of the principal rooms—and the books lining its walls were with one exception of small value. Lady Vayne maintained that, when shown this one exception, the lady librarian of Chatsworth had actually betrayed signs of envy! The one ewe lamb, as Lady Vayne called it, was nothing less than the earliest known edition of the Sarum Missal, printed for Caxton in Paris in 1487—but how and when this unique volume had been acquired the family history did not reveal.

When everybody had assembled in the library and Truelove had announced dinner, they would process into the dining-room, Sir Thomas taking in Mrs. Waldegrave, and Lady Vayne bringing up the rear with the Canon. Probably Cousin Amy would be allotted to Mr. Hunt. The boys and girls would bunch in together at the last. Through the little tapestried anteroom they would pass into the big Georgian dining-room. The long table extending almost the entire length of the room would glitter and sparkle with the lights reflected in the silver and the white of the cloth and from the walls the family portraits would smile benignly on the company. On one of the four gilt side-tables would stand the wonderful rose-water dish and ewer, silver and parcel-gilt with the Vayne arms embossed in coloured enamels—made in the reign of Bloody Mary. (Truelove had discovered this treasure, its existence apparently unknown, in the depths of a plate chest.)

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