Miss Buncle Married Read Free

a popular couple. Mr. Abbott played a good hand of bridge, and Barbara was pronounced to be “really very sweet.” Her bridge was poor, of course, and completely lacking in character—you never knew where you were with Barbara Abbott as your partner. Sometimes she played quite reasonably for a hand or two, and then her eyes would stray round the room, and she would fall into a kind of trance and have to be told to play and would wake up and ask what was trumps. It says a good deal for Barbara’s personality and her friends’ charity that, in spite of such glaring faults, they liked her, but like her they did—everybody thought that Arthur Abbott had done well for himself when he married her. They had given him up for a confirmed bachelor years ago, and they were amazed when he took a holiday in the height of the publishing season and returned to Sunnydene with a wife. “ It just showed ,” they said.
    They all called, of course, and some of the more curious tried to find out where the new Mrs. Abbott had come from and who she was before Arthur married her. But after a few not very searching questions, they gave it up—it didn’t really matter who she was. They liked her, and she was obviously a lady and obviously had money of her own. She dressed well, with a simplicity that they knew was expensive, and she had a small car she was learning to drive herself—what did it matter who or what she was; it was none of their business. 1
    Thus the Abbotts had been accepted, had become popular, and had been involved in a social round of engagements from which they were now trying to extricate themselves. How was it to be done? That was the question. What excuse had they? The truth was too fantastic to be admitted openly—they would look such fools…
    Barbara produced her engagement book and they pored over it while they drank their tea, and Barbara consumed crumpets in vast quantities, and Arthur nibbled toast.
    â€œI don’t see how we can get out of the Smiths’,” Barbara said, “or the Gorings’ either, for that matter. And Sybil Beauchamp will never speak to me again if we let her down on the 9th.”
    â€œWe must make a clean sweep,” Arthur declared.
    â€œBut how?” objected Barbara. “What excuse can we make? Tonight’s easy, of course,” she continued. “There’s your headache—but I had better go and ring her up now, so that she can make up her tables.”
    She bolted the last crumpet and wiped her buttery fingers on
    her handkerchief. “You can be thinking of something while I’m away,” she added hopefully.
    Mrs. Copthorne was exceedingly annoyed when she heard about Mr. Abbott’s headache, for now she was left with six—an inconvenient number for bridge—and it was too late to get anyone else (except, perhaps, the curate, and even that only made seven).
    Barbara soothed her and rang off feeling rather frightened. If everybody was going to be as difficult as Mrs. Copthorne they would never escape—never. It was a ghastly thought.
    She went slowly into the back premises to find the Rasts (the married couple who cooked and buttled so impeccably for Arthur and herself), and here more difficulties materialized, difficulties requiring just as much tact and patience as the egregious Mrs. Copthorne. There was nobody in the kitchen but Dorcas (Barbara’s own personal maid), and Dorcas was ironing.
    â€œLawks, what a turn you gave me, Miss Bar—Mrs. Abbott, I mean,” Dorcas exclaimed, “creeping in so silent like that. I put out your black lace tonight (you don’t want to mess up your best at old Mrs. Copthorne’s) and I’m giving your velvet a press while Mrs. Rast is out. Her face is enough to turn the milk sour.”
    â€œWhere are they?” Barbara inquired, looking round the kitchen vaguely as if she expected Rast and Mrs. Rast to appear from behind the