Читать книгу Non-combatants and Others - Macaulay Rose - Страница 30

Kate retired to domestic duties in the back regions.

Evie, before doing the dusting, took up the Daily Message and glanced through the feuilleton. It had been the same feuilleton for many weeks. It was always headed by a synopsis and a list of characters: 'John Hargreave, a strong, quiet man of deep feeling, to whom anything underhand is abhorrent. Valerie Lascelles, a beautiful girl of nineteen, who loves John. Sylvia, her sister, exactly like Valerie in face, but not in character, for she is shallow and hard and lives abroad, the widow of a foreign count. Cyril Arbuthnot, a smart man about town, unscrupulous in his methods, who sticks at nothing.' No wonder Evie found it interesting.

Then she flicked competently round the drawing-room with a duster, calling to Florence to clear away quick, because she wanted the table for cutting out.

Alix did the lamps in the pantry.

Mrs. Frampton did accounts and wrote to Aunt Nellie, in the dining-room.

Florence cleared away, also in the dining-room.

Kate looked in in her hat and coat, with the little red books that come from shops on a Saturday morning.

'I'd better get in a new tongue, I suppose, mother. The one we have will scarcely be sufficient for Sunday.'

'Yes, dear. Get one of the large ones.'

Kate went bill-paying.

Evie extracted incomprehensively-shaped pieces of brown paper from the pages of Home Chat, a weekly periodical which she took in, and began her cutting-out morning.

Alix returned from the lamps and said, 'I'm going out for the day with some people. I may go on to Nicholas in the evening, very likely.' (It may or may not have been before mentioned that Alix had a brother of that name.)

'Very well, dear. Bring your brother or some of your friends back with you afterwards, if you like. I'm sure it would be very nice if they stopped to supper. Our supper's simple, but there's always plenty for all. And the Vinneys are coming round afterwards, so we shall be a nice party. I asked them because they've got that cousin, Miss Simon, staying with them, and I thought they'd be glad of an evening's change for her.'

'That fatty in a sailor blouse,' Evie, who observed clothes, commented. 'I should think they'd be glad of a change from her. She's a suffragette, and talks the weirdest stuff; she's as good as a play to listen to. … I shouldn't think your brother'd get on with the Vinneys a bit, Alix.'

'Probably not,' said Alix. 'He doesn't with most people.'

Evie looked as if she shouldn't think he did.

'What's the name of that new floor-polish, to tell Aunt Nellie?' said Mrs. Frampton, pausing in her letter.

But, as Kate was out, and as it was neither Ronuk nor Cherry Blossom (suggestions of unequal levels of intelligence from Evie and Alix), she had to leave a space for it.