Enchanted Glass Read Free Page A

History.
    “Would you believe, it’s a computall now!” Mrs Stock told her sister. She never could get that word right. “Sitting there all day, patter-patter, like dry bones, fair gives me the creeps. And if I ask him anything, it’s, ‘Do as you think best, Mrs Stock’. I could have given him the boiled teacloths for lunch and he wouldn’t have noticed!”
    Well, he
was
a professor, Trixie pointed out, andprofessors were well known to be absent-minded. And in her opinion, men were all children at heart anyway.
    “Professors! Children!” Mrs Stock exclaimed. “I tell you, it’s worse than that. The man needs a
minder
to keep him in order!” Then she went quiet, struck with an idea.
    Mr Stock looked proprietorially in through the window of Andrew’s ground-floor study. He surveyed the new computer and the explosion of thick books and papers around it, on the desk, draping off it, on the chairs, floor, everywhere, and the chaos of wires and cables around these. He was struck with an idea too. The man needed someone to keep him in order, someone to stop him interfering with those who had real work to do. Hm.
    Mr Stock, thinking deeply, dropped round at his brother-in-law’s cottage on his way home.
    It was a very pretty cottage, thatched roof and all, although Mr Stock never could see why a man in Tarquin’s condition should put up with an
old
place just because it looked good. Mr Stock much preferred his own modern bungalow with its metal frame windows. Tarquin’s windows were all crooked and didn’t keep the draught out. But Mr Stock could not avoid glowering jealously at the garden. Tarquin O’Connor had some kind of touch, even if it was only with flowers. The roses that lined the path to the front door now. Mr Stock could not approve theseromantic, old-fashioned sort of roses, but he had to admit they were perfect of their kind, healthy, big clusters of cups, rosettes, whorls, and buds and buds coming on. More prizes at the Fête for Tark, for sure. And the bushes so well controlled that not one thorny branch strayed to catch a visitor coming between them to the door. While beyond them — well — a riot. Scents in the air. Enviously, he knocked on the door.
    Tarquin had seen Mr Stock coming. He opened the door almost at once, holding himself up on one crutch. “Come in, Stockie, come in!”
    Mr Stock entered, saying, “Good to see you, Tark. How’s things?”
    To this, Tarquin replied, “I’d just put a pot of tea on the table. Isn’t that lucky now?” He turned, swinging himself on both crutches into the main room, all the space downstairs bar the kitchen.
    Two cups on the round table by the windows, Mr Stock noticed. “Expecting my niece home, were you?”
    “No, no, she’s not due yet. Expecting you,” Tarquin replied, puffing a bit as he got himself and his crutches arranged in the chair behind the teapot.
    Joke? Or did Tarquin really have the Sight? Mr Stock wondered, getting out of his boots. Tarquin had nice carpets. Not to his taste, these dark Oriental things, butexpensive. Besides, the poor fellow had a job and a half with a vacuum cleaner. Mr Stock had seen him, balanced on one crutch, with his stump of a leg propped over a chair, scraping and pushing for dear life. It didn’t do to tread dirt in. He put his boots near the door and sat facing Tarquin in his socks, wondering as usual why Tarquin had grown a beard. Mr Stock did not approve of beards. He knew it was not because of scars; but there it was, a little tufty dark grey beard on the end of Tark’s chin. Nor was it for convenience either. You could see the man had shaved round it carefully. Might as well shave the lot, but he didn’t.
    Tarquin O’Connor had once been a jockey, a very good one and very well known. Mr Stock had placed many a bet on horses ridden by Tark and never been out of pocket. Tarquin had been rich in those days. Mr Stock’s much younger sister had had the best of everything, including expensive