Good Behaviour Read Online Free PDF

with the same long steps as Lady Grizel, and stood in the same careless, rather flighty way. A
     lovely sort of fantasy possessed Mrs Brock as she moved in this new pretty way, this confident way. Partof herself became Lady Grizel – she absorbed Lady Grizel and breathed her out into the air around herself, and the air around
     was a far less lonely place in consequence.
    All that Mrs Brock’s grateful heart and tiny brain could contrive in return for these favours was to knit – and for knitting
     she had true flair and genius. In the schoolroom she would sit alone in a loving glow as frail clouds of wool grew through
     her clever fingers into wraps and misty bedwear for Lady Grizel’s birthday or Christmas presents.
    Nannie showed nothing but cold amusement when asked to admire these voluptuous clouds knitted with such speed and skill. She
     felt Mrs Brock’s time would be better employed in organising wholesome outdoor sports for the boys. Nannie herself still bowled
     to them with a hard ball and had often been heard to shout above any childish uproar: ‘Now, now,
do
stop this quarrellin’, boys, and let’s have a nice talk about huntin’.’
    There came a day when every soul in the big house was alerted in the search for a ring which Lady Grizel had lost – her engagement
     ring – star sapphire and diamonds. But sapphire and diamonds were as nothing compared to its romantic value. No one had stolen
     it. No one suspected anybody else of stealing it, and everybody longed and burned to find it.
    Nobody was more filled with longing and burning than Mrs Brock, and she set about the business of the search with meticulous
     generalship. She plotted every step Lady Grizel had taken on the day of her loss, living the day vicariously and minute by
     minute. And on this day more than on any other she projected herself into the absolute life of Lady Grizel.
    We too shared in the day’s life, and a very long and dull day it was, until the paradisaical moment when, in the eveningdusk of the flower room, where, besides doing the flowers, Lady Grizel faithfully composed, from a selection of goodies sent
     daily from the kitchen, the dogs’ dinners, Mrs Brock found the ring hanging, its glitter downwards, its gold unremarkable,
     on the brass tap of the flower-room sink. Here Lady Grizel – now she remembered – had washed her hands after pinching her
     way through the Peke’s dinner, eliminating the danger from chicken bones. How Lady Grizel loved that dog. ‘Oh, Changy, why
     do your little feet smell of mice?’ she would ask him with tears in her eyes.
    But to return, as we so often did, to that extraordinary day, that May evening when Mrs Brock made her unexpected appearance
     in the library. The library was unfamiliar and fearful territory not to be enjoyed by her. It was, as Richard described it
     to us, an ordinary room of its date and kind, arranged without any feeling that went further than expensive comfort. There
     was a great dullness about the crowding pictures, as if ignorance of their interest and worth had fogged them. The eighteenth-century
     gentlemen in their Tailor of Gloucester waistcoats retreated sulking into their century. Only racehorses, of the School of
     Herring, faithful dogs, and a famous stallion hound were given full importance. Hung where they could be seen and enjoyed,
     they shared the best light with amusing Spi cartoons. Hepplewhite sofas and love-seats had all been expelled. The present
     furniture had an assured, comfortable permanence. On club fender and sofas dark red leather was buttoned firmly into place.
     Low armchairs bulged tidily under their thick, starched covers. Brass-bound tubs of flowers from the greenhouses stood in
     appropriate spaces, gardeners’ prides in plenty, but no exotics. Romantically invading all that was prosaic, the scent fromsheaves of lilies of the valley (arranged in silver vases, tulip shaped, by Lady Grizel herself) throbbed and drifted on the