The Made Marriage Read Free Page A

The Trinket Box would be but a memory.
    She fastened the window with a little shiver that was only partly due to the chill air and slipped into her dressing-gown. She would go down to the living-room and make herself coffee. It might help to straighten out her jumbled thoughts and banish the gloom that had settled or. her usually ebullient spirits.
    Quietly she tiptoed past Margot’s room, trying to avoid the squeaking board. When Kate reached the sitting-room Bedsocks awoke from her slumbers on the rag rug with a little murmur of pleasure at her mistress’s appearance and rubbed her head affectionately against her leg.
    It was while she was waiting for the coffee pot to boil that Kate noticed a little guiltily that the piece of newspaper in which the exiled Irishman had wrapped his heirloom had been carefully stowed in the wastepaper basket. Margot, as usual tidy and methodical in her habits, must have removed it from the counter. From the heading Kate could see it was an Irish newspaper and a little curiously she picked it up. It mentioned places and events that to her ears sounded strange and remote and even faintly incredible: farmer from Ballinahasset arrested for making poteen in his outhouse; a tinker whose donkey was found wandering in Coolnagreana: a hurling match was announced at Killmacoo. With growing interest she passed to a page of advertisements: to let, grazing, fifty acres of grass limed and slagged: for sale, eight hundred bales of barley straw: wanted, day-old chicks. Her eyes strayed to a column headed ‘Matrimonial’. Underneath she read, ‘Lonely farmer seeks bride. Applicant need not be pretty, witty, or even possess dowry, but good-nature essential and ability to establish warm domestic atmosphere. Please enclose recent photograph with first letter.’
    Still holding the paper, Kate sank into an armchair and once more scanned the words, ‘warm domestic atmosphere’. They had a kind of homely poetry. Chin in hand, she stared into the heart of the dying embers and tried to visualise the kind of man who had composed the advertisement. Obviously he was living up to the Irish reputation for whimsicality, yet home-loving and unavaricious. In spite of his being Irish she pictured him as sandy-haired with knobby good-natured features.
    She was aware that s he herself was no beauty. The photographs Margot had taken of her outside the shop a few months previously had made that fact only too clear. Not of course that she would ever consider answering such an advertisement! It was not by this method that she wished to obtain a husband.
    She had always imagined that one day the bell above the door of The Trinket Box would ring and, looking up, she would find herself staring into the eyes of a young and handsome man who would, of course, fall instantly in love with her. It wouldn’t really matter a lot if he weren’t rich as long as they were very mu c h in love. She realised however that it was extremely unlikely her dream would materialise. Margot, after all, had the proper ou tl ook and no doubt, in the long run, she would find a lasting contentment to recompense her for the loss of the ecstatic happiness which she had been denied.
    With a sigh Kate squeezed the sheet of paper into a tight ball and tossed it towards the fire: her aim, however, was not good and it rolled back on to the hearth where Bedsocks pounced on it with glee. As Kate bent and gently disentangled the cat’s sharp claws an idea smote her : after all, this Irishman and herself were two lonely people. Perhaps his letters, if he should reply, would help to make endurable the dreary days ahead as Margot and herself wound up the affairs of The Trinket Box and their little world came to an end.
    Carefully she smoothed out the page and folding it placed it in her dressing-gown pocket. They need go no further than exchanging letters : it was not, she told herself firmly, that s he would be foolish enough to play with fire.

 
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