A HOME STATION—WHAT MRS. BULLER THOUGHT OF IT—WHAT MAJOR BULLER THOUGHT OF IT.

Riflebury, in the south of England—our next station—was a very lively place. “There was always something going on.” “Somebody was always dropping in.” “People called and stayed to lunch in a friendly way.” “One was sure of some one at afternoon tea.” “What with croquet and archery in the Gardens, meeting friends on the Esplanade, concerts at the Rooms, shopping, and changing one’s novels at the circulating library, one really never had a dull hour.” So said “everybody;” and one or two people, including Major Buller, added that “One never had an hour to one’s self.”

“If you had any one occupation, you’d know how maddening it is,” he exclaimed, one day, in a fit of desperation.

“Any one occupation!” cried Mrs. Buller, to whom he had spoken. “I’m sure, Edward, I’m always busy. I never have a quiet moment from morning to night, it seems to me. But it is so like you men! You can stick to one thing all along, and your meals come to you as if they dropped out of the skies, and your clothes come ready-made from the tailor’s (and very dearly they have to be paid for, too!); and when one is ordering dinner and luncheon, and keeping one’s clothes decent, and looking after the children and the servants, and taking your card, and contriving excuses that are not fibs for you to the people you ought to call on, from week’s end to week’s end—you say one has no occupation.”

“Well, well, my dear,” said the Major, “I know you have all the trouble of the household, but I meant to say that if you had any pursuit, any study——”

“And as to visitors,” continued Aunt Theresa, who always pursued her own train of ideas, irrespective of replies, “I’m sure society’s no pleasure to me; I only call on the people you ought to call on, and keep up a few acquaintances for the children’s sake. You wouldn’t have us without a friend in the world when the girls come out; and really, what with regimental duties in the morning, and insects afterwards, Edward, you are so absorbed, that if it wasn’t for a lady friend coming in now and then, I should hardly have a soul to speak to.”

The Major was melted in a moment.

“I am afraid I am a very inattentive husband,” he said. “You must forgive me, my dear. And this sprained ankle keeping me in makes me cross, too. And I had so reckoned on these days at home to finish my list of Coleoptera, and get some dissecting and mounting done. But to-day, Mrs. Minchin brought her work directly after breakfast, and that empty-headed fellow Elliott dropped in for lunch, and we had callers all the afternoon, and a coterie for tea, and Mrs. St. John (who seems to get through life somehow without the most indefinite notion of how time passes) came in just when tea was over, and you had to order a fresh supply when we should have been dressing for dinner, and the dinner was spoilt by waiting till she discovered that she had no idea (whoever did know her have an idea?) how late it was, and that Mr. St. John would be so angry. And now you want me to go in a cab to a concert at the Rooms to meet all these people over again!”

“I’m sure I don’t care for Mrs. St. John a bit more than you do,” said Mrs. Buller. “And really she does repeat such things sometimes—without ever looking round to see if the girls are in the room. She told me a thing to-day that old Lady Watford had told her.”

“My dear, her ladyship’s stories are well known. Cremorne’s wife hears them from her, and tells them to her husband, and he tells them to the other fellows. I can always hear them if I wish. But I do not care to. But if you don’t like Mrs. St. John, Theresa, what on earth made you ask her to come and sit with you in the morning?”

“Well, my dear, what can I do?” said Mrs. Buller. “She’s always saying that everybody is so unsociable, and that she is so dull, she doesn’t know what to do with herself, and begging me to take my work and go and sit with her in a morning. How can I go and leave the children and the servants, just at the time of day when everything wants to be set going? So I thought I’d better ask her to come here instead. It’s a great bore, but I can keep an eye over the house, and if any one else drops in I can leave them together. It’s not me that she wants, it’s something to amuse her.

“You talk about my having nothing to do,” Aunt Theresa plaintively continued. “But I’m sure I can hardly sleep at night sometimes for thinking of all I ought to do and haven’t done. Mrs. Jerrold, you know, made me promise faithfully when we were coming away to write to her every mail, and I never find time. Every week, as it comes round, I think I will, and can’t. I used to think that one good thing about coming home would be the no more writing for the English mail; but the Indian mail is quite as bad. And I’m sure mail-day seems to come round quicker than any other day of the week. I quite dread Fridays. And then your mother and sisters are always saying I never write. And I heard from Mrs. Pryce Smith only this morning, telling me I owed her two letters; and I don’t know what to say to her when I do write, for she knows nobody here, and I know nobody there. And we’ve never returned the Ridgeways’ call, my dear. And we’ve never called on the Mercers since we dined there. And Mrs. Kirkshaw is always begging me to drive out and spend the day at the Abbey. I know she is getting offended, I’ve put her off so often; and Mrs. Minchin says she is very touchy. And Mrs. Taylor looks quite reproachfully at me because I’ve not been near the Dorcas meetings for so long. But it’s all very well for people who have no children to work at these things. A mother’s time is not her own, and charity begins at home. I’m sure I never seem to be at rest, and yet people are never satisfied. Lady Burchett says she’s certain I am never at home, for she always misses me when she calls; and Mrs. Graham says I never go out, she’s sure, for she never meets me anywhere.”

“Isn’t all that just what I say?” said Major Buller, laying down his knife and fork. (The discussion took place at dinner.) “It’s the tyranny of the idle over the busy; and why, in the name of common sense, should it be yielded to? Why should friends be obliged, at the peril of disparagement of their affection or good manners, to visit each other when they do not want to go—to receive each other when it is not convenient, and to write to each other when there is nothing to say? You women, my dear, I must say, are more foolish in this respect than men. Men simply won’t write long letters to their friends when they’ve nothing to say, and I don’t think their friendships suffer by it. And though there are heaps of idle gossiping fellows, as well as ladies with the same qualities, a man who was busy would never tolerate them to his own inconvenience, much less invite them to persecute him. We are more straightforward with each other, and that is, after all, the firmest foundation for friendship. It is partly a misplaced amiability, a phase of the unselfishness in which you excel us, and partly also, I think, a want of some measuring quality that makes you women exact unreasonable things, make impossible promises, and after blandly undertaking a multiplicity of small matters that would tax the method of a man of business to accomplish punctually, put your whole time at the disposal of every fool who is pleased to waste it.”

“It’s all very well talking, Edward,” said Aunt Theresa. “But what is one to do?”

“Make a stand,” said the Major. “When you’re busy, and can’t conveniently see people, let your servant tell them so in as many words. The friendship that can’t survive that is hardly worth keeping, I think. Eh, my dear?”

But I suppose the stand was to be made further on, for Major Buller took Aunt Theresa to the concert at “the Rooms.”