Summer Moonshine Read Free Page A

Observing Tubby, she started to go in, plainly feeling that it was not much use getting breaths of air when that air was polluted. Tubby, on his side, clenched his fists and drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, his face the while taking on a Byronic gloom.
    Jane waved a hand.
    'Good morning, Miss Whittaker.'
    'Good morning, Miss Abbott.'
    'I'm going up to London this morning. Anything you want me to do for you?'
    'No, thank you, Miss Abbott.'
    'No message for Percy?' asked Tubby unpleasantly.
    The secretary glided away in disdainful silence. Jane, turning to Tubby to ask who Percy was, for this was the first time she had heard of any Percys in Prudence Whittaker's life, caught sight of his face.
    'Golly, Tubby!' she exclaimed. 'What's the matter?'
    'I'm all right.'
    'Then you deceive the eye.'
    'I'm fine,' said the sufferer moodily.
    Jane was not to be put off like this:
    'You're nothing of the kind. You look like one of those strong, soured men who have a row with the girl and go off and shoot lions in Africa. I expect Buck used to meet them in dozens when— Tubby! Have you and La Whittaker parted brass rags?'
    Tubby reeled. This clairvoyant girl had taken his breath away. He had supposed his love a secret locked away behind a masklike face.
    'What do you know about me and La— I mean Miss Whittaker?'
    'My poor child, it's been sticking out a mile for weeks. Your bulging eyes when you looked at her told their own story.'
    'Is that so? Well, they've changed their act.'
    'I'm awfully sorry. What happened?'
    'Oh, nothing,' said Tubby. A man has his reserves.
    'Who's Percy?'
    'Nobody you know.'
    Jane forbore to press the question. She was longing to hear all about that shadowy – one might say, mystic – figure, whose role seemed to be that of Serpent in the Vanringham-Whittaker Garden of Eden, but she was a tactful girl. Instead, she asked him what he was going to do about it. Tubby replied that he wasn't going to do anything about it. Jane screwed up her blue eyes and looked at the heat mist that flickered over the turf.
    'Well, it's a shame,' she said. 'Have you thought of trying homoeopathic treatment?'
    'Eh?'
    'In cases like this, I always think that another girl should be applied immediately. What you need is plenty of gay feminine society. You're the sort of man who's lost if he hasn't a girl.'
    'I can take them or leave them alone.'
    'What girls have we? I'm lunching today with six from the old school, headed by Mabel Purvis, at one time president of the Debating Society. Would you care to join us?'
    'No, thanks.'
    'I thought you mightn't.' Jane paused. 'Of course, you know, Tubby darling,' she said, 'I don't want to seem callous and unsympathetic, but, however rotten it is quarrelling with someone you're fond of, there's a sort of bright spot to this particular bit of trouble.'
    'What?' said Tubby, who had missed it.
    'Well, but for this rift, you would have had to inform your stepmother, when she got back from America, that you were intending to marry a humble working girl. You know her better than I do, but I wouldn't have said offhand that she was a woman who was frightfully fond of humble working girls.'
    This angle of the situation had presented itself to Tubby's notice independently once or twice since the severing of his relations with Miss Whittaker. The Princess von und zu Dwornitzchek – she had married and divorced the holder of this high-sounding title about two years after the death of the late Mr Franklin Vanringham – was, he knew, inclined to be finicky where his matrimonial plans were concerned, and she possessed, unfortunately, the power of the high, the middle and the low justice over him. That is to say, she could at will stop his allowance, and set him to work at the bottom of that fish-glue business of which he had already made mention; a prosperous concern in which she had inherited a large interest from her first husband, a Mr Spelvin. And though Tubby knew little or nothing of conditions