Before the Fact Read Free Page B

said: “And we must have the Frasers, of course. They make anything go.” Lina found them unbearable.
    “Get your hat on, my dear,” Mrs. Fraser said gaily. “We’ve come to drag you to church.”
    “Oh!” said Lina, jumping up. “I didn’t see you coming.”
    “We wanted to go to the front door,” giggled the eldest Miss Fraser, “but Johnnie saw you out here and insisted on coming round.”
    “Johnnie?” Lina echoed stupidly.
    Among the Frasers she now saw Johnnie Aysgarth, twinkling at her confusion. Lina blushed and hated everyone.
    Her mind groped with difficulty from James Agate, through Johnnie’s unbearably knowledgeable smile, to Mrs. Fraser.
    “Church?” she said, and felt that her conversation lacked sparkle.
    “Place where they pray, dear,” explained the youngest Miss Fraser succinctly. “You must have heard of it. Where they park the parson.” Nobody could say that the Frasers’ conversation lacked sparkle.
    “Hush, dear,” smiled Mrs. Fraser mechanically. And then to Lina: “Yes, really, Lina. The girls absolutely insist on your coming with us.”
    “But – I wasn’t thinking about going to church this morning,” Lina stammered.
    “Then think about it now,” said the middle Miss Fraser. “You’ve got to come, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”
    Johnnie Aysgarth said nothing. He just stood there and grinned at her. But his grin was eloquent. Every line of his face told Lina that she was going to join the party, and that he knew she was going to join the party, and she was going to join the party simply because he wished her to do so.
    Lina tried to speak calmly. “In any case, I couldn’t go to church in this frock.” Against her will she caught Johnnie’s eye. It was openly derisive. Lina’s flush deepened. Certainly the implication contained in her banality, that her Creator could bear to be worshipped by Miss McLaidlaw only in her best frock, hardly did credit to one who out of twenty-four persons had been the only one worth talking to.
    “Then change,” said the middle Miss Fraser crisply.
    “And buck up about it,” added her younger sister.
    Mrs. Fraser sank into the deck chair.
    Lina went upstairs in a fury. She knew quite well who was responsible for this preposterous invasion. The “girls” absolutely insisted, did they? Exceedingly likely! And what right had anyone to “insist”? It was insufferable.
    Besides, everyone would see her there, sitting next to Johnnie Aysgarth. Probably he would try to hold her hand during the sermon, or something equally impossible. And everyone would know why she was there, and there would be talk, and people would say the most ridiculous things.
    But what made her most angry of all, as she tore off her frock, was the fact that she simply had not had the strength of mind to refuse.
    “My dear, where are you going?” asked her mother with simple wonder, encountered on the stairs five minutes later.
    Lina held out her prayer book as if it had been a snake. “To church,” she said bitterly.
    “What, all alone?”
    “No, with the Frasers.”
    “The Frasers? But I thought you didn’t like them?”
    “I loathe them,” replied Lina with conviction.
    “Well, thank you, dearest, at any rate. It was quite time one of us went,” said her parent.
    Life in the country has its obligations.
    Lina walked the half mile along the dusty road between Johnnie and Mrs. Fraser in angry silence. She refused to be appeased even by the precocity of the hedges, and allowed her neighbours to exchange comments on them over her head. Johnnie hardly spoke to her at all.
    At the church door she felt his hand on her arm. She tried to shake it off, but it held her too fast. She found herself being detained while the Frasers filed inside. Then, to her unspeakable indignation, she was turned about and marched back along the path, Johnnie’s hand tightly gripping her elbow, right under the eyes of certain other late-comers.
    “Mr.