Cold Comfort Farm Read Online Free PDF

because of Father, and I said no, I was afraid I couldn’t; and after that she left me alone. But all the others still said I was
no good
.’
    Mrs Smiling nodded her approval, but she told Flora that she talked too much. She added:
    ‘Now about this going to live with someone. Of course, you can stay here as long as you like, darling; but I suppose you will want to take up some kind of work some time, won’t you, and earn enough to have a flat of your own?’
    ‘What kind of work?’ asked Flora, sitting upright and graceful in her chair.
    ‘Well – organizing work, like I used to do.’ (For Mrs Smiling had been an organizer for the L.C.C. before she married ‘Diamond’ Tod Smiling, the racketeer.) ‘Do not ask me what that is, exactly, for I’ve forgotten. It is so long since I did any. But I am sure you could do it. Or you might do journalism. Or book-keeping. Or bee-keeping.’
    Flora shook her head.
    ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t do any of those things, Mary.’
    ‘Well … what, then, darling? Now, Flora, don’t be
feeble
. You know perfectly well that you will be
mis
erable if you haven’t got a job, when all your friends have. Besides, a hundred pounds a year won’t even keep you in stockings and fans. What will you live on?’
    ‘My relatives,’ replied Flora.
    Mrs Smiling gave her a shocked glance of enquiry, for, though civilized in her tastes, she was a strong-minded and moral woman.
    ‘Yes, Mary,’ repeated Flora firmly, ‘I am only nineteen, but I have already observed that, whereas there still lingers some absurd prejudice against living on one’s friends, no limits are set, either by society or by one’s own conscience, to the amount one may impose upon one’s relatives.
    ‘Now I am peculiarly (I think if you could see some of them you would agree that that is the word) rich in relatives, on both sides of the family. There is a bachelor cousin of Father’s inScotland. There is a sister of Mother’s at Worthing (as though that were not enough, she breeds dogs). A female cousin of Mother’s lives in Kensington. And there are also some distant cousins, connections of Mother’s, I believe, who live in Sussex …’
    ‘Sussex …’ mused Mrs Smiling. ‘I don’t much like the sound of that. Do they live on a decaying farm?’
    ‘I am afraid they do,’ confessed Flora, reluctantly. ‘However, I need not try them unless everything else fails. I propose to send a letter to the relatives I have mentioned, explaining the situation and asking them if they are willing to give me a home in exchange for my beautiful eyes and a hundred pounds a year.’
    ‘Flora, how
insane
!’ cried Mrs Smiling; ‘you must be
mad
. Why, you would
die
after the first
week
. You know that neither of us have ever been able to
abide
relatives. You must stay here with me, and learn typing and shorthand, and then you can be somebody’s secretary and have a nice little flat of your own, and we can have lovely parties …’
    ‘Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly. But you put me off what I was going to say. When I have found a relative who is willing to have me, I shall take him or her in hand, and alter his or her character and mode of living to suit my own taste. Then, when it pleases me, I shall marry.’
    ‘Who, pray?’ demanded Mrs Smiling, rudely; she was much perturbed.
    ‘Somebody whom I shall choose. I have definite ideas about marriage, as you know. I have always liked the sound of the phrase “a marriage has been arranged”. And so it should be arranged! Is it not the most important step a mortal creature can take? I prefer the idea of arrangement to that other statement, that marriages are made in Heaven.
My
marriage, Mary, will be arranged
into
Heaven.’
    Mrs Smiling shuddered at the compelling, the almost Gallic, cynicism of Flora’s speech. For Mrs Smiling believed that marriages should arise