The Little Girls Read Free Page B

unless you’re going to have a drink.”
    “No, you will have to excuse me, as I said.”
    The path brought them out on to a lawn, into uninterrupted view of Dinah’s house—it was not easy to look at anything else. Applegate had been erected in 1912, by a retired haberdasher from Bristol. A substantial villa, it was built (like almost everything else round here, new or older) of stone, of a kind slow to weather or mellow. The house bespoke the sound workmanship which had gone into it; nothing had so far blunted the cut angles, gables, or mul-lions of the plate-glass windows (of which several projected into bays) or modified the new-quarried glare of the whole—which, by contrast, the lush green, wooded and pastoral, rolling Somerset landscape round it enhanced. Applegate promised to be much the same within as it was without, and was. Nothing rattled at night, even in a gale: the windows fitted, the doors shut properly. Neither the staircase nor any floor creaked. That may have been one of the reasons why she had bought it; another was the cave.
    This was that only hour when land looks haunted. A farmhouse, to which the orchard belonged, had after many generations burned to the ground, just here, the year before Applegate was built, taking with it its hopeless, son-less master—thought to have upset a lamp when he came home drunk. Now the sun had diluted into a misty film, and this curious substitute for a sunset imparted a tinge of yellow to the successor’s stone, or drew out an undertone that was there, Applegate stood up to the hour, as it had to others. Through a window, Francis could be seen moving about in his white coat, bringing in the drink tray. The lawn-the women were crossing was scarred with outlines: crescent-and-diamond-shaped and circular ornamental flowerbeds, in other Septembers gorgeous with begonias, had been turfed in.
    To reach the gate to the lane, it was necessary to skirt a side of the house. Out from this at a distance welled up a copper beech, under whose crimson-black canopy dangled a child’s swing—unevenly, one rope being a trifle longer than the other. It caught Dinah’s eye as though for the first time—turning her head as they walked, she continued to watch the swing in a peculiar, vacant yet intent way (the way in which she had looked at space, in the cave), which attracted notice. “Perfectly safe, is that?” asked Mrs. Coral.
    “Oh, yes. Just, when it swings it twirls.” Dinah answered —as though from another planet.
    “So long as it’s safe… . Oh!” Suddenly Mrs. Coral thwacked at the air with her mesh bag, magazines and all. Terrified, the rose leaped from her buttonhole. “There now!” Vexation, mortification reddened her face. “I went and never made you out your receipt!”
    “Oh, have we to bother about that?”
    “I believe in being particular, Mrs. Delacroix. But the truth is, you gave me such food for thought.”
    “I’m so glad. I mean, I am so sorry.”
    “I’ll be dropping you your receipt in first thing tomorrow.” They had come to the white gate, which stood hooked open. Regretfully, Dinah held out a goodbye hand, but her friend had not by any means done. “Or tonight my Finn might, if he’s out on his bike. It would make an object for him. I expect he’d like to. The way I shall be situated is, I have jam to cover—and label, naturally. I should hardly like to tell you how many pounds! Plum. They are anxious to have it, so may be calling. Otherwise … Well, I am very much obliged to you, Mrs. Delacroix. I’ll say good evening.”
    She put the resolution into effect. Dinah stood in the lane, unheedly waving, then came in—shutting the gate, with some idea of safeguard against the Finn. This gate was shut only very rarely, when there were cattle about. When Frank took off in his car, he would be dumbfounded. One cannot at once please everyone and be pleased oneself. This was a time when she could have done with a vacancy. Francis, when he