Hue and Cry Read Free Page A

turned to see and recognize Dorothy Leonard.
    â€œDorothy!”
    â€œMally!”
    â€œHow on earth——”
    â€œMally, where have you been?”
    â€œNowhere—absolutely nowhere. Look here, I’ve got to get some of this grease paint off. They’re going to clear away the chairs for us to dance. Come along with me, and we can talk whilst I tidy. I shan’t change—this dress is much too becoming.”
    Upstairs in Mally’s room Dorothy looked at her admiringly.
    â€œMally, you’re engaged, aren’t you, to that frightfully good-looking Mr. Mooring? I’m simply dying to hear all about it. Do tell me!”
    Mally pinned up her ringlets out of the way and began to wipe the grease paint off her face.
    â€œBeastly stuff! I hate it!” she murmured.
    â€œMally, tell me all about it. Where did you go when you left?”
    â€œI went into the depths of Dorset to my Aunt Deborah, and it was deadly dull. Dorothy, you’ve no idea how dull it was—how dull everything’s been until now. Mercifully, Aunt Deborah’s great friend, Mrs. Marsden, had two grandchildren home from India, and she asked if I’d come and teach them in the mornings, just to break them in for school. They were little fiends, but they weren’t dead and buried like Aunt Deborah and old Mrs. Marsden.”
    â€œPoor Mally! Then what happened? Do go on!”
    â€œAunt Deborah died. And she’d been living on an annuity, so I hadn’t a penny. The fiends were going to school, and I was just wondering what was going to happen to me, when Mrs. Marsden said her niece, Lady Emson, wanted a nursery governess, and would I go if she recommended me?”
    Mally turned round, towel in hand, her face pale and shiny.
    â€œAnd you went?” Dorothy appeared to be breathlessly interested.
    â€œWent? Of course I went. I hadn’t anywhere else to go. But it was fairly grim.”
    â€œMally!”
    Mally, having removed the grease paint, was applying powder to her little nose. She waved the puff at Dorothy.
    â€œMy child, it was. The che-ild was the limit—mother’s joy, and ‘She’s so sensitive, Miss Lee—you mustn’t cross her.’ Cross her?” said Mally viciously. “If ever there was a child that wanted crossing morning, noon and night, it was darling Enid. Yes, it was grim—it really was. I’d have wheeled her into line all right if I’d been let—but I wasn’t. And Lady Emson is one of those people who look upon a governess as a sort of educational implement, not a human being. Oh, how I hated it!” She began to put on a little rouge very delicately. “What made it worse was that Blanche, the grown-up Emson girl, was just my age and having a frightfully good time.”
    â€œOh, poor Mally! But do tell me about Mr. Mooring. How did you meet him?”
    Mally laughed.
    â€œOh, he came to stay. He’s a cousin of the Emsons. And he and I fished darling Enid out of a muddy pond together. Frightfully romantic, wasn’t it? And then next day he came up to the schoolroom to ask how she was. And the day after we met by accident in a wood.”
    â€œAccident! Oh, Mally!”
    â€œOf course he made the accident,” said Mally composedly. She was darkening her eyebrows. “And then there were some more accidents. And then he said, would I be engaged? And I said I’d try and see if I liked it. And then ”—she paused and sparkled—“ then there was a most hair-raising row, and I had to go and stay with my cousin Maria, who hasn’t a baked bean in the world, whilst Roger broke me gently to his mother.”
    â€œMally, how thrilling!”
    â€œSome of it,” said Mally, “was almost too thrilling.”
    â€œAnd is Lady Mooring all right to you?”
    â€œOh, she’s frightfully kind. Every one is. I’m having the time of my life. Jimmy Lake, you