Master of Melincourt Read Free

and constantly finding fault with her. But when you’d never been allowed to leave anything at all lying in your own room, let alone the other rooms in the house, and you never spoke out of turn because you were frowned at if you did so, and it was dinned into you that your school work was important, and all set tasks had to be accomplished however difficult they were, or distasteful, it was extraordinarily difficult—not to say almost impossible—to feel entirely sympathetic towards someone like Tina, who, although she was an orphan, had been thoroughly spoilt by a devoted uncle, had everything she wanted apparently right from her cradle, and had never been ordered to do anything at all that she did not like doing.
    Edwina, as she followed her across the park, attempted the well-nigh impossible task of keeping up with her, and resolved at the same time to be a little more patient, a little more perceptive, perhaps, of what made a small thing like Tina react as she did ... not at all unlike, at times, a filly with the bit between its teeth.
    Unfortunately Edwina knew next to nothing about horses, so likening her to an unmanageable filly did not simplify her problem in any way, or enable her to see it from a different aspect. But she made up her mind—in her own interests, and possibly also Tina’s — that she would take the uncle’s advice and try, at least, to understand her. She would try a little more psychology than she had so far done, and perhaps it might yield results.
    Having arrived at this decision, and feeling a little breathless because she had quickened her steps considerably for the last quarter of a mile or so, she suddenly realised that Tina in her light blue slacks and yellow cardigan had vanished from the scene. She had vanished as completely as if she had never been ... she and Strawberry, who was never more than a foot or so behind her.
    Edwina frowned as she surveyed the landscape. Although there were a lot of trees it was fairly open, and it shouldn’t have been possible for anyone to disappear unless they were some distance away. Tina had been increasing the distance between them during the last few minutes, but one minute she stood out against the skyline like a gaily coloured elf with lank locks and a curious, tireless, skipping gait, and the next she had gone to ground.
    Edwina stopped, called sharply: “Strawberry, Strawberry !” in the hopes that the dog, at least, would hear and return to her. But nothing moved in the hazy distance ahead of her, the church clock chimed three, and after that there was a curious, spreading silence.
    Edwina started to move forward hurriedly, and finally she broke into a run. Someone giggled hard on her heels, a conker that had lain buried in leaves since the previous autumn hit her a light, glancing blow on the side of her head, and she wheeled pantingly to find herself confronted by Tina, who promptly started to laugh uproariously, and to bound up and down like a delighted sprite.
    “I fooled you, I fooled you!” she cried. “I was right behind you all the time, and you didn’t know! Part of the time I was hiding behind a tree.”
    She was hugging Strawberry up in her arms, and staggering slightly under the weight of the distinctly plump animal.
    Edwina was about to admonish her with severity — or as much severity as she could manage after running at top speed for a hundred yards or so—but then she remembered the resolution she had formed so very recently.
    Very much to Tina’s surprise—and possibly, also, to her disappointment—the new governess closed her lips, shrugged her shoulders and turned.
    “Oh, well,” she said, “it just shows how clever you are, doesn’t it ? You and a tree are capable of looking very much alike!”
    Tina gazed at her curiously. She fell into step beside her, and they made for home.
    “I don’t like that old suede jacket you’re wearing,” the child remarked, when the silence between them had lasted that much