Master of Melincourt Read Free Page A

too long for her. “For one thing it isn’t real suede, is it ? Sort of imitation.”
    Edwina glanced down at the front of her jacket, and grimaced slightly.
    “I don’t like it myself very much,” she confessed. “But I can’t afford to throw it away and buy another one.
    “Why? Haven’t you got much money?”
    “Not much.”
    “Doesn’t my uncle pay you a lot of money to look after me ? ”
    “He’s very generous,” Edwina admitted. She decided to elaborate: “As a matter of fact, he’s far more generous than any other employer I’ve ever had.”
    “Then why don’t you smarten yourself up a bit ? ” With the cruelty of eight years of age, and the knowledge that her own pale blue nether garments and her canary yellow sweater had been created in Switzerland, and bought there when she and her Uncle Jervis had decided to do a little shopping in Zurich’s Rue de la Paix during their most recent visit to the Continent, Tina’s bright eyes narrowed and she pressed home her point. “It’s important to look smart, you know. My Uncle Jervis simply can’t stand women who look dowdy! The other night when you wore that black lace thing at dinner he said afterwards that he expected you picked it up in a jumble sale.” She giggled. “I don’t really think you did, because it fitted you quite well, I thought, but it was an amusing thing to say, wasn’t it? Uncle Jervis is terribly amusing when he feels like it.”
    “I think it was a hilarious thing to say,” Edwina commented with heightened colour.
    Tina glanced at her under her tight little black brows.
    “You don’t mind being made fun of? Uncle Jervis makes fun of nearly everybody except Marsha Fleming ... and she’s so beautiful, and her clothes are so gorgeous, that he couldn’t possibly do anything but adore her. Which he does!” with emphasis.
    “Highly satisfactory, I’m sure,” Edwina murmured, “if he’s going to marry her.”
    Tina kicked the ground with the toe of a badly scuffed shoe.
    “Of course he’s going to marry her,” she said a trifle shrilly. “And he’s going to marry her very soon. He must, he must, because I want him to!” kicking up part of a dandelion root and scattering it to the four winds. “He promised me when we were in Paris that he would, and I’m going to see that he does!” She looked more slyly up at Edwina. “When Marsha comes here she’ll make fun of you, too. She’ll probably make you feel hideously uncomfortable,” making use of a word that she had only recently acquired. “Don’t you think it would be better for you if you went home now, and then you could escape it and someone else mightn’t mind your old suede jacket and that black lace dress? They might even think you look all right in them !”
    “No,” Edwina answered quietly, “I have no intention of leaving if your uncle wishes me to remain.”
    Tina made a petulant movement, aimed a kick at a bronze nymph in the rose-garden, they having by this time emerged from the park on the west side of the house, and as the stables were not very far distant went racing off to them to inspect her uncle’s most recent present to her, a chestnut pony.
    Edwina followed in a more decorous manner, and when she entered the stable yard she saw that Bimbo—the dog who had on more than one occasion prevented the postman from delivering his letters—was on guard in the middle of it, and Jervis Errol was leaning against one of the half doors and having a few words with a groom about his own rangy grey, that was being led up and down for exercise and displaying a distinctly skittish tendency to prance about the yard.
    Now Edwina was very fond of animals—most animals. But she had been bred in a town, and horses and large dogs still made her feel nervous ... particularly horses.
    In endeavouring to give the grey as wide a berth as possible she unwittingly came closer to Bimbo than anyone who knew Bimbo at all well would have considered wise, and the