The Coldstone Read Free Page B

have sent to meet you, but we have no carriage. Have you come alone?”
    â€œI’m expecting a friend to-morrow.”
    â€œThat will be pleasant for you. It is a big house to be alone in.”
    â€œI feel as if it would take me ages to find my way about in it. Do you know if there’s a plan of the house at all?”
    â€œA plan?”
    â€œYes. I’d like to get it into my head.”
    â€œI—don’t know.” She looked a little alarmed. “Oh, here is Agatha.”
    Miss Agatha Colstone came in through the open door from the garden. She wore a wide straw hat tied under her ample chin with a bit of rusty black ribbon. Her skirt was short, her shoes very sensible. She held a garden fork. The hand she offered Anthony had obviously been weeding.
    â€œ There! ” she said in a deep voice. “I’ve finished that border, thank goodness! So you’re young Anthony. Let me have a look at you. Who are you like?”
    â€œHe isn’t like poor Papa,” said Miss Arabel rather plaintively.
    â€œWhy should he be?”
    â€œMust I be like someone?” said Anthony with a twinkle.
    Miss Agatha fixed her rather prominent eyes upon him. They were brown and round like little bullseyes, but not unfriendly.
    â€œH’m—I can’t see any likeness.”
    Then she sat down, fanned herself with the fork, and began to ask him all the questions that Miss Arabel had already asked. For the second time, he had had a pleasant journey, and a friend was coming to stay with him. Then, with relief, to new ground. The friend’s name was West—about his own age—he hadn’t seen him for four years because he had been in India—they used to be great pals—he was a junior master at Marfield.
    Miss Agatha was a vigorous questioner. She elicited in a swift competent manner that Anthony was twenty-six, disengaged, a golfer, a fair shot, six foot in his socks, and of no particular brand of politics. This appeared to shock her a good deal. Sir Jervis had obviously ranked politics with religion—and the greater of these was politics.
    Anthony hastened to change the subject. He wanted to talk about Stonegate. But Miss Agatha did not.
    â€œYour father died—”
    â€œWhen I was three. I hardly remember him or my mother. Her people brought me up—an aunt and her husband. He farmed his own land. I think I’d have gone in for farming if he’d lived; but he died when I was sixteen. My aunt wanted me to go into the army. She said farming was no good without capital.”
    â€œQuite right.”
    â€œI was wondering—” He broke off. He didn’t want to embark on plans. The word sent him back to the question he had asked Miss Arabel. “I suppose there are plans somewhere—of the house and everything? I want to know my way about. And perhaps you can tell me what’s my best way up to the field where the Stones are. I thought I’d walk up and have a look. Fancy—I asked Mrs. Hutchins about them, and she couldn’t tell me how many there were. She said she’d never even been to have a look at them. Isn’t it amazing?”
    Miss Agatha had been fidgeting with the dusty fork, to the detriment of her black serge skirt. When Anthony said “Amazing,” she dropped the fork and stooped frowning to pick it up again. Miss Arabel said “Oh!” in a helpless, fluttered sort of way.
    â€œShe couldn’t even tell me how many stones there were,” pursued Anthony cheerfully. “And by the way, of course you can tell me all about them. I’m fearfully interested. How many are there?”
    There was one of those silences that follow the worst kind of faux pas . He had dropped a brick—most undoubtedly he had dropped a brick. He would have liked to drop a few more, noisily, with a crash; to heave, say, the plush photograph album through the left-hand casement window; or to catch Miss