“This is a very generous gesture on Mr. Playdle’s part!” Matron, with an arm round each of the little girls, smiled at Catherine as she came in.
“It’s due to the letter you wrote him,” was Catherine’s quick response. “He seems to have appreciated it very much.”
“And do you think we shall appreciate having a puppy?” Matron demanded, her eyes alight with humor. “Shall we be able to endure having our bedroom slippers stolen and our gloves chewed to rags?”
“Oh, but we’ll teach him to behave beautifully,” Ruth declared vociferously. “He’s sure to be awfully clever, and awfully sweet, with a mother like Sally.”
Catherine, aware that Ruth’s own mother had been anything but desirable as a parent, and that Maureen had lost hers in infancy, felt a twist of the heart at this remark. But neither child seemed to see its implication, and Maureen went on at once, her eyes wide: “And think how fine it will be to have a watch-dog to protect us.”
“I’m afraid we shall have to wait a while before he’s up to that,” Matron said, with becoming gravity.
“Well, may we go to tea at the Manor, and may we have the puppy?” Ruth exclaimed imploringly. “Do say ‘Yes,’ Matron, and put us out of our misery.”
“Misery, indeed!” Matron chuckled, and dropped a light kiss on the two eager faces raised to hers. “If this is what you look like when you’re miserable, what do you look like when you’re happy? However, I’m going to say, ‘Yes’, on one condition. The puppy will belong to us all, of course—he’ll be’ just another member of the family—but you, Ruth, must undertake to look after him. You’ll have to see to his food and his grooming, train him in nice habits, rescue him if the babies tease him too much, and generally take care of him. The others, including Maureen, can help you, of course; but you will be responsible for him.”
“Matron, you are a lamb!” Ruth exclaimed ecstatically, and Maureen observed, half-wonderingly: “I can’t get used to grown-ups liking letting us do what we want. The Missis hated it. She always said ‘No’ if she possibly could.”
“I thought you were going to forget all about that, childie,” Matron said, with crisp kindliness. “Now run into the garden, dears, and help Miss Dewney to bring the babies in. It’s high time they were tubbed and bedded.”
When the two children had disappeared, Catherine asked Matron in some bewilderment: “Who does Maureen mean by ‘Missis’?. She can’t have been out to work at her age.”
Matron looked grim. “That’s her stepmother. ‘Your dad’s new missis’ was the way the neighbors continued to refer to her, even after years of marriage. It was meant as a term of reproach, as the woman well knew, and she tried to get her own back by making Maureen, whom she already treated as a drudge, use it in a completely servile way.” She shook her head. “It’s a bad story. After one or two warnings, she never laid a finger on the child, so that it was extremely difficult to prove cruelty; but if there’s any worse cruelty than forcing a child to live in an atmosphere of perpetual hate and fear, I don’t know of it. Do you know,” and her eyes glinted, “if Maureen spilt a few crumbs on the floor, she forced her to get down on her knees, pick them up and eat them, as though she had been a little animal. And that’s only one example of the kind of thing that went on. Sheer hatred, springing from a crazy jealousy, of Maureen’s dead mother—that was the trouble.”
Catherine, who was familiar with the broad outlines of Maureen’s pitiful background, but who had heard few details, let out a deep sigh.
“Will she ever be able to forget?” she said.
Matron shook her head. “Never! But if one day she finds herself able to think of it without bitterness and without horror—perhaps even with a sense of pity for a warped, unstable nature—we shall have done our job.”
Then, her face changing, she turned to the open door towards which half a dozen toddlers were making, shepherded by Ruth and Maureen.
“Who is going to be first into the bath?” she cried, holding out her arms; and snatching up a couple of tiny boys, she bore them off, shouting with laughter, to the bathroom.
Certainly there were few clouds on Maureen’s face during the next few days, and when Sunday came both she and Ruth were literally hopping with excitement.
Their Sunday frocks, Ruth’s green, and Maureen’s pale blue, were as attractive as those of any children in the village, and Hilda, who had made them, could not repress a smile of satisfaction, as she watched the party set off, despite her disapproval of the whole business.
Catherine, delighted with the well-groomed appearance of her charges, was conscious that she herself was looking her best. The tailored dress of checked mauve and white silk which she was wearing was an old favorite, in which she always felt at home, and her little hat of chipped straw, a recent acquisition, lent it a reasonably up-to-date air.
She was, had the children known it, looking forward to the tea-party with as much zest as themselves. The thought of being in Andrew’s company held an undeniable thrill; but apart from that she felt sure it would be easy to get on well with Cecily. There had been something about the girl which she had liked from the beginning, and now she understood why there had been that chill in the atmosphere at the mention of Garsford House, she felt that there was no longer any reason why they should not be friends.
“I’m sure she will give the children and myself, too, a warm welcome,” she reflected, as the three of them made their way up the rough drive which led to the Manor. But when they reached the big, oak-studded front door, standing invitingly open, she received a shock.
Andrew came strolling out to greet them, a welcoming smile on his sun-tanned face, but behind him came not Cecily but Beryl Osworth, looking, moreover, extremely bored, and at Andrew’s first words, Catherine’s heart sank into her boots.
“Poor Cecily is flat out with a violent sick headache,” he said. “But by a piece of sheer luck Beryl Osworth, whom you have already, met, has turned up for the afternoon. So you won’t be left entirely to my tender mercies; you will have a hostess, after all.”
CHAPTER SIX
Tea had been set out on the terrace at the back of the house, and Catherine reflected once again that she had never seen a lovelier house and garden. There was nothing grand or formal about it, but the place had an air of having been lived in and loved and cherished for generation after generation.
Flowers were everywhere. They grew in the chinks of the old stone walls, and among the paving stones—late wallflowers, yellow stone-crop, gay little dwarf geraniums and campanulas, mauve and pink and blue. Jasmine, clematis and pale pink roses climbed round the mullioned windows, and below the terrace, sloping to the velvety lawn was a great bed of herbaceous plants—brilliant lupins of every shade, larkspurs and delphiniums, crimson geums, flaunting their loveliness in the afternoon sun.
“The rose garden is to the right there, under the arch,” Andrew told her, evidently following her thoughts. “We’ll make a grand tour after tea—though I expect it’s the farm buildings which will interest the children most,” and he smiled across the table at the two little girls.
They beamed at him, but said nothing, conscious of Beryl’s critical gaze, as they tried to spread their butter tidily on rather crumbly scones, and helped themselves to sticky iced cake.
“I’d no idea I was dropping in on a tea-party,” Beryl observed, sipping her tea; exclaiming in horror, as Andrew passed her a plate of cakes: “Heavens, no! A biscuit is all I can cope with. I outgrew schoolroom tea years ago.”
Maureen found her tongue then and, plainly amazed that anyone should despise iced cake, observed reflectively, and in all innocence: “I suppose it would be ages and ages since you were at school. Still, some quite old people—”
The rest of her sentence was never uttered, for at that moment Sally came padding along to welcome the visitors and to ascertain if they had been kind enough to drop any sizable crumbs. And the conversation immediately switched to her and her offspring.
“I suppose she’s disappointed at not having Andrew to herself,” Catherine reflected, “and is taking a cheap revenge by trying to make me and the children feel ill at ease.” And from that fell to wondering whether Andrew, too, was heartily wishing that the trio from Garsford House had chosen another day for their visit. Certainly Beryl, for all her expression of discontent and disdain, was attractive enough to make any man welcome the opportunity of an afternoon alone with her. There was something almost Spanish in the sweep of her dark lashes, in the play of her hands, in the arrogant curve of nostril and lip; and her frock of smoky grey chiffon with touches of scarlet at the throat and waist, was so distinguished in cut and style as to make Catherine herself, in her sensible washing silk, feel a positive dowd.
“If Andrew really likes her, he can’t possibly have any use for me,” she thought, with a slight constriction at the heart. “We are so utterly different in every way.” But though she observed Andrew carefully, without appearing to do anything of the kind, she could obtain no clue to his thoughts. He was placidly amiable to them all; indeed if one individual took up more of his attention than another; it was undoubtedly Sally.
Most fervently did she wish that Cecily had been there, and Beryl miles away. Cecily, she felt sure, would have set the children at their ease at once. She would have chatted to them, and drawn them out, complimented them—as all little girls like to be complimented—on their pretty frocks, plied them with scones and cakes, so that they could have satisfied their normal childish appetites without feeling that they were being greedy. Andrew might do his best, but they were still a little shy with him; and the bored way in which Beryl, who was after all their hostess, looked and spoke, had a paralyzing effect on them. Even the sugared cakes lost their lure. They ate little and, after Maureen’s one hapless effort, spoke less; and Catherine knew that they were wishing heartily they were back at Garsford House, eating Matron’s homely rock buns, and chattering away without fear of incomprehensible frowns and reproving silence.
She wondered—not without impatience—how it was that Andrew apparently failed to see how badly Beryl was behaving. Surely it must be evident even to the most obtuse male that the girl’s coldness was no negative thing, but a deliberate attempt to blight the feast.
However that might be, it seemed to have occurred to Andrew that Beryl and his guests were not exactly comfortable together for, when, tea over, he suggested a stroll round the farm, he asked Beryl if she would mind going in and giving an eye to Cecily—adding with a quizzical glance—that in any case Paris models were hardly suitable for scrambling about lofts and stables.
Having no option but to do as she was asked, Beryl went off with a fairly good grace, murmuring, however, that she hoped that “all the chatter at tea,” hadn’t made “poor Cecily’s headache worse.”
“Hardly, my dear, since her bedroom is at the other side of the house,” was Andrew’s bland retort. “Still, it’s sweet of you to think of it.”
The undisguised irony of his tone was not lost on Beryl, who flushed with resentment as she walked away. As for Catherine, off her guard for once, she stared at him in speechless surprise, wondering what was coming next.
He looked back at her for a moment with raised eyebrows, as though challenging her to comment on his rudeness to Beryl; then, as her glance wavered, he went on serenely: “Which is it to be first, the rose, garden, or the stable? Miss Emberley is the eldest: she must choose.”
Catherine, knowing how eager the children were to see the puppies, plumped for the stables, and found he approved her choice.
“Cecily’s the gardener; she’ll make a much better show of taking you a tour of the rose-beds than I should,” he said. “I always get half the names wrong. On the other hand, Cecily knows almost nothing about livestock. She can tell a Friesian cow from a Shorthorn, but when it comes to pigs and sheep—” He shrugged his shoulders eloquently. “I always tell her, ‘For pity’s sake, my dear, don’t marry a farmer. You’d break his heart in a week’.”
Catherine, recalling that she had never seen Cecily with him on his tramps over his land, that it was Beryl who had been his companion, wondered, as she walked across with him to the farm buildings, whether Beryl’s interest in farming matters was genuine or assumed. It was easy to imagine her reading up the differences between Gloucester Old Spots and Large Whites, but less easy to picture her brewing innumerable jugs of tea for thirsty threshers, looking after the ducks and hens, car taking a turn in the dairy.
On the other hand, if Andrew believed her sincere in her enthusiasms, that was all that mattered, from her point of view. Disillusion might eventually come, but the process would be so gradual that all sting would be taken from it; that, at least, was how she would argue.
Would Andrew be readily gulled? That was a question difficult to answer, she reflected, as she cast a sidelong glance at his face which, handsome as it was, could sometimes wear a pretty grim expression. He had seen straight through just now to the petty spite which lay beneath the girl’s pretended solicitude for his sister, and had visited it with ridicule, that most cruel of all weapons. But Beryl would not usually be so careless—and so obvious; it was irritation over being deprived of a long afternoon alone with Andrew which had made her behave so crudely.
Before long, however, she was forgetting all about Beryl and her disagreeable ways. In a corner of one of the old stone-built stables, where a pair of Andrew’s carthorses lived, place had been found for Sally and her puppies; and there she was now, having preceded them by several minutes, a picture of maternal pride and anxiety.
“They’re getting a bit too much for her,” Andrew said; and stooping, he picked up a couple of wriggling’ puppies and handed them to the delighted children. “She does her best to keep them nice and clean, but she doesn’t always succeed, so look out for those smart frocks of yours.”
“They’ll wash,” Catherine assured him smiling, “and so will mine. May I take one up, too?”
“Of course. Now here’s the one I picked out as a future member of your large family.” He thrust a particularly lively and obstreperous pup, jet-black like his mother, into her arms. “He’s an attractive little beggar though I doubt if he’ll ever win a prize at a show.”
“We don’t want a prize-dog, we want a pet,” Maureen exclaimed. “I think he’s sweet. Not that the others aren’t darlings, too. This one I’ve got is angelic.”
“So’s mine,” Ruth declared loyally. “Still, perhaps Miss Emberley’s is more adventurous-looking. We want a dog that won’t mind pretending to be a grizzly bear or a lion or something of that sort—when he’s a bit older, of course.”
“Oh, he’ll be up to that in no time, I’m sure,” Andrew told her, with a faint twinkle in those shrewd blue eyes of his. “By the way, what are you two going to call him?”
“Ruth is really the one to choose his name,” Maureen said, a shade regretfully, “because she is going to look after him, mostly. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly fair,” he agreed. “Well, Ruth, what is it going to be?”
Ruth blushed deeply. “I think it would be nice to call him after you,” she murmured. “Not your first name, perhaps; you might think that cheek. But if you have a second name—”
He smiled broadly at that. “I have,” he said, “but I hardly think it is suitable for a dog. I’ve often thought it most unsuitable for a sensible man, anyway.”
“O-oh, what is it?” Both children were on tiptoe with curiosity, and Catherine’s warning murmur that it wasn’t polite to ask personal questions passed unheeded.
He shook his head. “I
think we’ll keep it dark—for the present. I appreciate the intended compliment—but surely you have some other ideas.”
“We could call him Sunday,” Maureen suggested, after a moment’s thought, adding shyly: “It would remind us of the nice afternoon we’ve had with you.”
“Now who teaches you children to make all these pretty speeches?” Andrew demanded teasingly, with a glance in Catherine’s direction. “And what has Ruth to say?”
“I think Friday would be a better name than Sunday,” Ruth declared eagerly, her rosy face wreathed in smiles. “You know, after the black—”
“Yes, after the black gentleman in that book Matron’s reading to us,” Maureen chimed in enthusiastically. “I think Friday’s just a lovely name.”
Friday it had to be, and soon, the other puppies restored to their mother, Ruth was proudly carrying the new acquisition around in her arms.
They went on a tour of the beautifully kept farm buildings, over which hung an atmosphere of Sabbath drowsiness. The cows had been milked, and were out in the pastures again, but there were some new little calves to visit, a couple of hefty but singularly mild-looking bulls, and several enormous pigs, surrounded, some of them, by clamorous little ones, to whom they appeared to pay scant attention, as they lay dozing in the late afternoon sunshine.
The constraint from which the children had suffered at tea-time had vanished completely now. They were enjoying every moment, and showed it; and it was with difficulty that Catherine persuaded them, as six o’clock chimed from the village church, and the bells began to ring for the evening service, that it was high time they went home.
“They really have behaved beautifully,” she thought with pride, as the quartet returned slowly to the house, Ruth still in possession of Man Friday. Nor was her calm ruffled when Beryl, who was standing at the open front door, a white coat slipped over her chiffon frock, told Andrew rather coldly that she had waited as, long as she could, but must be off now.
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