Читать книгу Fire in the Thatch - Edith Caroline Rivett - Страница 5

Table of Contents

It was Anne who uttered the warning which sent her father out of doors before he had had his second cup of coffee.

“June is coming down to breakfast. I believe she wants to talk to you about letting Little Thatch to those friends of hers.”

Colonel St Cyres choked back his immediate exclamation of “Good God!” and said hastily, “Er... er... later in the day will do for that. I’ve got a letter from a friend of Robert Wilton’s... a naval chap, invalided out. Sounds all right... I shall be in the wood-shed if you want me, Anne...”

The wood-shed was the Colonel’s favourite refuge. He loved wood and he loved wood fires. At the moment he had two vast logs of ash—the split bole of an old tree—and he wanted to cut them up in his own particular way. “Ash green or ash dry, meet for a queen to warm her fingers by,” he murmured as he rolled the wood over to a convenient angle and considered the matter of driving a wedge in to split it. Leisurely in all his ways, he did not hurry. Having arranged his log and chosen his wedges, he lighted his pipe and took his letters out of his pocket. Anne’s sentence about letting Little Thatch made Colonel St Cyres anxious to consider the letter he had received that morning. Smoothing out the sheet, St Cyres read:

“Sir,—I am advised to write to you by Commander Wilton, who tells me that you have a small property to let—Little Thatch. I have recently been invalided out of the Navy on account of damaged eyesight, and I am seeking a small holding or house with an acre or more of good fertile land suitable for intensive cultivation. I aim at a market garden combined with an orchard and should be glad to keep a few head of stock if pasture is available. I am very fit and intend to work my own land, and I can housekeep for myself for the time being. If your property is what I am seeking, I should be willing to buy, or to take it on an assured tenancy of some years’ duration so that it would be worth while putting work and capital into cultivating the land. I have the opportunity of driving over to see Little Thatch to-morrow morning at 10.30. If I do not hear from you to the contrary by 10 a.m. I shall assume that I can be allowed to view the property. My telephone number is Culverton 79. Yours faithfully, Nicholas Vaughan.”

“Sounds just the sort of chap I want there. It’s a fine fertile bit of land, and though it’s out of cultivation now, it’ll pay anyone to cultivate it,” said St Cyres to himself. “I only hope he likes it...”

He replaced the letter in his pocket and picked up his mallet, aiming skilfully at the wedge he had placed to split his great gnarled log. He was only half-way through the job when the door of the wood-shed opened and a breath of Chypre wafted across the pleasant smell of wood shavings and sawdust.