Better to Eat You Read Online Free PDF

like a Spanish courtyard, planted with flowers and small graceful trees, dreaming and drowsing between the house and the high bluff upon which blazed and hung curtains and cascades of blossoms. Over the garden’s hush the surf still sounded, far away. David felt it in all his muscles, as if he had come into a spot so beautiful and peaceful that it was relaxing to the point of nearly making him fall limply down.
    But Malvina led him to some garden chairs in a spot dappled with shade. She was polite, correct, even agreeable, yet by something furtive and stolen in the very tension of her smile, by the glance of her measuring eye toward the house wall, she now made him feel like a criminal intruder. It was as if she had smuggled him within the gate illegally and as if something dreadful would happen were he to be seen or heard.
    â€œYou know who Grandfather is, Mr. Wakeley?” Her smile was as pretty as toothpaste and her eyes glistened cordially. But David stiffened. He had seen, before, a frank and open countenance, worn upon a manner that hints of perils and mysteries. He thought she had the candid stare of the pathological liar. He thought he had better be careful.
    â€œHe is the Fox of Fox and Lupino, isn’t he?” David answered easily.
    â€œYes. He is.” Malvina looked down at her large handsome hands. Although her well-fleshed body was not girlish, he thought she was probably only in her twenties. “He is a dear old man, a great darling. They were not so well known in America.” Her eyes came up, inquiring.
    â€œFrankly,” he admitted, “I never heard of them until I met Sarah.”
    â€œWeren’t you in England, then, during the war?” she asked. Her arm was graceful.
    â€œI was chair-borne in Washington during the war. I’ve never been to England.” He thought she sighed. “Surely you’re not homesick, Miss Lupino?”
    She looked around at Paradise. “Sometimes,” she said wistfully. David thought to himself, She’s suggestible. A strange person. There was something unreal about Malvina, as if she wore a heavy mask and whatever woman existed behind it was not to be easily discovered. “But what is it about Sarah, please?” Malvina purred. “How can I help you?”
    David said, “Perhaps you know that she’s got a very strange idea that she is a Jonah, a bad luck carrier.”
    â€œOh yes,” said Malvina quickly. “Yes, we know.” David could not tell whether she was alarmed or meant to seem a little alarmed. “Such a strange idea,” she murmured.
    â€œI want her to work with me on a book this summer. A great boon to me. But this strange idea,” David went along with it, “seems to be in the way. I came to see whether her family knew about it.”
    â€œOh yes, we do know.”
    â€œWhat do you think of it?”
    Malvina hesitated. She threw him a look which seemed to say, Forgive me, but I don’t know you. “We know about it,” she said firmly, “and we are trying to help her. I doubt if I could persuade her to take that job, Professor Wakeley. I doubt if she should. I think you must get someone else. Surely you can find a secretary who will not trouble you with …”
    â€œâ€¦ an idea,” said David. He settled back, looking his largest and most imperturbable. He was not going to tell Malvina about his car crashing and the tragedy. He was not going to tell Fox, either. He was not ever going to let Sarah Shepherd know about it, if he could help it. “It won’t trouble me,” he said.
    â€œBut aren’t you afraid …” she began and stopped herself.
    â€œOf an idea?” said David. “No.”
    He watched her move her hand in a gesture of wonder and helplessness. If the family’s version of Sarah’s trouble was that it existed only as an idea, he was going to find that out. “Tell me,” he said