Читать книгу The House That Is Our Own - Anna Masterton Buchan - Страница 4

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The Comedy of Errors

KITTY BAILLIE threw down the book she was reading and yawned inelegantly.

“Why,” she asked, “does anyone ever read a thriller? They leave such a nasty sticky taste in one’s mind.”

“They leave me scared stiff,” said her companion. “But then, I’m a feeble soul.”

She did not look a feeble soul, this Isobel Logan, as she stood smiling down at her friend, and Kitty Baillie, who had sat herself down on the edge of her bed, said:

“Feeble! You? Why, you look like a pillar of the British Empire.”

Isobel, unimpressed by this tribute, continued. “Why read thrillers if you don’t like them?”

“Oh, just to make a change. I’ve been reading nothing but history lately.”

“Yes. I know. I like the book you lent me last—Henrietta Maria. That was more interesting than any novel. But how they could have beheaded that little gentle Charles, I don’t know!”

“Well,” said Kitty judicially, “he was terribly obstinate: dour to a degree.”

“As to that, if every obstinate person was beheaded the world would be a shambles. Kitty, if you bounce like that, you’ll make your mattress sag.”

“It sags already,” said Kitty. “I do hate to feel the bones of a bed.”

“As bad as that? Mine is quite good, and think what I weigh compared to you.”

“Oh, you needn’t throw your superior height in my face. Am I nothing but low and little? (You know, you and I would make quite a good Helena and Hermia, though I’m too old for the part.) But let me tell you, my girl, you’re much too easily pleased with everything. The world will simply make a footstool of you if you ask so little from it.”

Isobel made no reply, and Kitty gave an impatient jump on her maligned mattress, and continued, “I’m sick of this place.”

“It’s quite good as hotels go,” Isobel reminded her. “It’s well kept, the cooking isn’t at all bad, they keep good fires, and the servants stay. Some of them have been here ever since I came—how many years is that?—five—six?—and that in itself is a testimonial to the place. It’s convenient too for tubes and buses, and near the Park. Perhaps, as you say, I’m too easily pleased, but I confess to a weakness for the Queen’s Court Private Hotel.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Kitty; “it’s simply that I’m sick of it.”

She sat staring before her with a look of misery in her dark eyes, and Isobel, who knew her in these moods, turned her back and looked out of the window.

It was not an inspiriting outlook, a sort of court, into which the rain was falling in the peculiarly stark way March rain often falls. A van was being unloaded down below, and a quantity of damp straw lay about, a small dog snuffling amongst it. A message-boy relieved the tedium by shrill whistling, while a street-singer with a blatantly black eye bawled: