Thank Heaven Fasting Read Free

They achieved a semblance of ease with Monica, provided always that their dominating and intensely vital mother was not present.
    â€œCan I stay here for a little while? Mother’s downstairs.”
    â€œOf course. Come and sit down. Are you getting excited about your first ball?”
    â€œOh, very. I only hope I shan’t be a wallflower the whole evening.”
    â€œI’ll introduce as many men as I possibly can to you.” volunteered Frederica.
    â€œThanks very much, Fricky, but I daresay I shall know a good many there already,” Monica retorted, her false humility vanishing in the light of Frederica’s patronage.
    â€œYou’ve no idea how quickly men get all their dances booked up. Of course, I know they’ll have to ask us, on Thursday night, because we’re the daughters of the hostesses. But quite often a man has such a lot of duty dances to get through that he simply can’t ask one.”
    â€œHe could if he wanted to enough.”
    â€œYou haven’t been out long enough to understand.” said Frederica coldly.
    Cecily was twisting her hands about uneasily. Anything that seemed, however distantly, to threaten an emotional disturbance, had a most curious effect on her. She dreaded it to a degree that affected her physically, making her turn whiter than ever, and begin to shake.
    Monica was conscious, now, of tension in the atmosphere. It was almost always there with Frederica and Cecily, and more especially in their own home. Sometimes there seemed to be no specific cause for this, sometimes it was a cause so trivial as to be almost unbelievable. Very often, it was due to Frederica’s frenzied and possessive solicitude for her sister. Cecily was delicate, and Frederica would never let her, or anyone, forget it.
    â€œI think Cecily’s starting a cold,” she said now, her face suddenly falling into exaggeratedly tragic curves.
    â€œI don’t think I am.” Cecily said. Her eyes looked terrified, as though the issue was one of great magnitude. It was, indeed, obvious that it was so to the sisters.
    â€œYou always say that.” Frederica was suddenly tense with fury. “If only you’d say
at once
when anything was the matter—but you always go on and on, saying it’s nothing.”
    Cecily turned her scared gaze imploringly on Monica, as though to ask “Can you wonder at it?” But she said nothing.
    â€œPerhaps you can stifle it, if it
is
a cold, till after Thursday.” suggested Monica. She could see the relief on Cecily’s far too expressive face at this lightening of the subject.
    But Frederica could not let it go.
    â€œYou don’t know what Cecily’s colds are like.” she said darkly. “You think it’s just an ordinary cold, that’s over in three days. But with her, it may go on her chest at any moment, and mean nights and nights of coughing——”
    They couldn’t stop her, although both of them had heard her say the same thing many times before.
    Monica shrugged her shoulders, but Cecily looked as though she might be going to faint.
    There was a knock at the door, and the footman, young and trim in black livery with yellow facings, stood on the threshold.
    â€œIf you please, her Ladyship wishes the young ladies to come to the drawing-room.”
    â€œThank you, William. Is it a visitor?”
    â€œYes, Miss Frederica. Mr. Pelham is here.”
    â€œWho’s Mr. Pelham?” enquired Monica, as William shut the door behind him.
    â€œOh, he often comes to dinner. He’s a friend of mamma’s, a barrister. It’s very useful, knowing him, because he isn’t married, and she can usually get him when she wants an extra man.”
    â€œMother says that Lady Marlowe is perfectly wonderful about men. She
always
has enough.”
    â€œI know.” said Frederica. She did not look as triumphant as she should have looked, and Monica dimly guessed