Miss Buncle Married Read Free Page B

larder.”
    â€œWell, you’ll have to,” said Barbara, “I don’t see how she can be more disagreeable than she always is, and Mr. Abbott will want something to eat.”
    â€œHe’ll get it, don’t you worry,” Dorcas promised. “I’m not afraid of that old cat. I can stand up for myself, I hope.”
    â€œI wonder what there is!” Barbara said, moving vaguely in the direction of the larder.
    â€œNever you mind what there is, madame ,” Dorcas told her, “I’ll see you get something tasty. Off you go back to the poor gentleman, and leave it to me.”
    She turned off the iron as she spoke, and bustled away to see what she could find, leaving Barbara to return to her suffering husband.
    Thus it was that the Abbotts had a very comfortable little meal together, and spent a quiet evening by the fire. It was extraordinarily pleasant and peaceful despite the problem that vexed their minds. The problem was so absurd that they could not help laughing over it, but it was a very real problem all the same.
    â€œI don’t see what we’re to do ,” said Barbara, for perhaps the twentieth time. “You can’t have a headache every night, can you?”
    Arthur agreed that he couldn’t. “It’s gone now, anyhow,” he admitted.
    â€œHow angry Mrs. Copthorne would be!” Barbara exclaimed, with a little gurgle of delight.
    No solution to the problem was arrived at that night, but the following morning at breakfast Arthur hit on the one and only way out of their dilemma. It came to him quite suddenly in the middle of reading Messrs. Faction & Whiting’s advertising announcements, it came to him as a ray of light, a veritable inspiration straight from heaven—they would move.
    1. Mrs. Abbott’s “past” may be discovered in Miss Buncle’s Book by the same author.

Chapter Three
A Bloodless Victory
    There straightaway ensued a strenuous period for Barbara Abbott—it was she, of course, who was to find the perfect house (obviously Arthur could not be expected to range the Home Counties looking at houses—he had his work to do). Barbara flung herself into her task with all her energy—she really enjoyed it, for she was of an adventurous spirit. She visited house agents; she answered advertisements; she advertised in the papers and waded through the replies. She ranged the countryside daily in her small car—which she could now drive with a fair degree of competence—Kent and Surrey, Essex and Bucks became familiar country to Barbara. She visited big houses and small houses, old houses and new houses; houses with no water at all and houses that stood ankle deep in water. She visited houses buried in trees, dark and gloomy as the tomb, and houses set upon hilltops where the four winds blew through the flimsy masonry and the doors banged all day long, but she saw nothing that pleased her, nothing that satisfied her. The truth was Barbara had a picture of the ideal house in her mind’s eye. It had arisen, all unsought, that first morning when Arthur had said, “A nice house, further out of town, with a nice garden—trees and things.” The picture in Barbara’s mind was a concrete picture, quite incapable of alteration, and nothing she saw approximated to the picture, so nothing she saw would do.
    Every night when Barbara returned to Sunnydene, worn out and bedraggled with her fruitless search, Arthur would inquire, “Well, any luck today? Seen anything?” and Barbara would reply with invariable truthfulness, “I’ve seen five houses (or nine or three, as occasion demanded) but none of them are any good.” And she would add, hopefully, “But I’m going to Farnham tomorrow (or it might be Hatfìeld). The agents have told me about a house there which sounds as if it might do.”
    As week succeeded week Arthur began to despair. “Surely you’ve