The Matchmaker Read Free Page A

unsuccessfully, to improve upon Alda’s plans. After all, they were sure of a roof for their heads when much of England and most of Europe was living in a damaged house, or homeless. Here his flock of excitable, talkative feminine creatures must stay, in this depressing little place that was neither villa nor cottage standing so unexpectedly in the lonely fields; and here at least, while he was quartered in some dying town in broken Germany, he would be able to think of them on the long winter nights; safe, and in a home…of a sort.
    “This reminds me of the seaside lodgings we used to stay in when I was a boy,” he remarked, as they wandered in and out of the bedrooms, which were furnished with large brass bedsteads and solid Edwardian wardrobes and chests of drawers.
    “ We always stayed in hotels,” said Alda, whose father was a wealthy general practitioner in the provincial city where she had been born.
    “Yes, you poor little beasts.” He was standing in front of a picture and shaking his head over it.
    “We adored it; Jean and I used to get crushes on the waiters.”
    “Jean? What was she doing there with you?”
    “She used to come away with us whenever her wretched mother wanted to get rid of her.”
    “The beds do bounce, Mother!” shouted Jenny from the next room.
    “Don’t let Meg lie on them; they may be damp,” Alda called back. “It’s good that they bounce; they’ll be comfortable.”
    “Didn’t you tell me that Mrs. Hardcastle died recently?” Ronald went on.
    “Yes, about three months ago. I was so glad for Jean.”
    “Oh Mother !” Louise was standing at the door with a face expressing double distress; that someone should be dead and her mother so unlike her usual self as to be glad because of it.
    “Mrs. Hardcastle was very beastly, Weez,” said Jenny judicially. “You know what revolting teas she always gave us.”
    “Perhaps she meant them to be nice.”
    “Hur-hur! Perhaps not! Mother, I’m absolutely starving. How much longer are we going to stay here?”
    “I shouldn’t let Louise and Jenny have this room, Alda; it gets no sun at all,” said Ronald, turning away from his picture. “All right, Jen, we’re going in a minute.”
    “Have you seen enough to set your mind at ease , darling?” Alda asked, putting an arm about her husband’s neck and pulling his dark thin cheek down to her own. The gold in her hair, and her pale face and widely-curving smile, suggested a sunlit Amanda or Anthea, whereas “Alda” has an echo of the witchlike flowers and black berries of the elder tree, with some grey Norse sorceress weaving beneath its shade, but it means “rich,” and Ronald thought that it suited her.
    “Nothing could do that,” he answered, sighing, and held her close for a moment. “How far are you here from Pagets?” (the house where they had been staying with the Friends).
    “Only a mile across the fields in fine weather, but it’s a good three miles round by the road and the fields are impossible in the winter, unfortunately.”
    “I wish you could have stayed on there.”
    “So do I, but it just wasn’t possible. They’ll have no help in the house at all after next week, and the old lady is really ill. They’ve been so good to us; I can’t worry them any more.”
    Ronald walked across to the window (which was a modern one, set flatly in a metal frame and interposing none of the comfort of wood and deep-sunk panes between the room and the chilly night) and stared out across the faintly moonlit fields. A low wind was sighing round the house and swaying the tops of the pines.
    “And who are the people at the farm? Have you seen them?”
    “The Hoadleys, man and wife. They have the keys of this place and I had to call there for them. They weren’t particularly forthcoming but they seemed harmless.”
    “Could you go to them if you got in a hole? Have they a telephone?”
    “Oh yes; I telephoned to the agent from there. It’s a little farm that used