Hand in Glove Read Online Free PDF

enchanted with this trophy, and presently she discovered why.
    “Dearest Désirée,” he exclaimed. “How wonderfully clever of you: my crest, you know! The form, the attitude, everything! Connie! Look! Hal, do look.”
    The paperweight was passed from hand to hand and Andrew was finally sent to put it on Mr. Period’s desk.
    When he returned Moppett bore down upon him. “Andrew!” she said. “You must tell Leonard about your painting. He knows quantities of potent dealers. Actually, he might be jolly useful to you. Come and talk to him.”
    “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to say, Moppett.”
    “I’ll tell you. Hi, Leonard! We want to talk to you.”
    Leonard advanced with drinks. “All right, all right,” he said. “What about?”
    “Which train are you going back by?” Andrew asked Nicola.
    “I don’t know.”
    “When do you stop typing?”
    “Four o’clock, I think.”
    “There’s a good train at twenty past. I’ll pick you up. May I?”
    His mother had joined them. “We really ought to be going,” she said, smiling amiably at Nicola. “Lunch is early today, Andrew, on account we’re having a grand party tonight. You’re staying for it, by the way?”
    “I don’t think I can.”
    “I’m sure you can if you set your mind to it. We need you badly. I’d have warned you, but we only decided last night. It’s an April Fool party: that makes the excuse. Bimbo’s scarcely left the telephone since dawn.”
    “We ought to go, darling,” said Bimbo over her shoulder.
    “I know. Let’s. Good-bye.” She held out her hand to Nicola. “Are you coming lots of times to type for P.P.?”
    “I think, fairly often.”
    “Make him bring you to Baynesholme. We’re off, Harold. Thank you for our nice drinks. Good-bye, P.P. Don’t forget you’re dining, will you?”
    “How could I?”
    “Not possibly.”
    “It was — I wondered, dearest Désirée, if you’d perhaps rather…? Still — I suppose…”
    “My poorest sweet, what
are
you talking about?” said Lady Bantling and kissed him. She looked vaguely at Moppett and Leonard. “Good-bye. Come along, boys.”
    Andrew muttered to Nicola: “I’ll ring you up about the train.” He said good-bye cordially to Mr. Period and very coldly to his stepfather.
    Moppett said: “I had something fairly important to ask you, you gorgeous Guardee, you.”
    “How awful never to know what it was,” Andrew replied and, with Bimbo, followed his mother out of the room.
    Watching Désirée go, Nicola thought: “Moppett would probably like to acquire that manner, but she never will. She hasn’t got the style.”
    Mr. Period, in a fluster, extended his hands. “Désirée can’t know!” he exclaimed. “Neither can he or Andrew! How extraordinary!”
    “Know what?” asked Miss Cartell.
    “About Ormsbury. Her brother. It was in the
Telegraph
.”
    “If Désirée is giving one of her parties,” said Mr. Cartell, “she is not likely to put it off for her brother’s demise. She hasn’t heard of him since he went out to the Antipodes, where I understand he’d been drinking like a fish for the last twenty years.”
    “Really, Hal!” Mr. Period exclaimed.
    Moppett and Leonard Leiss giggled and retired into a corner with their drinks.
    Miss Cartell was launched on an account of some local activity. “…So I said to the Rector: ‘We all know damn well what
that
means,’ and he said like
lightning:
‘We may know but we don’t let on.’ He’s got quite a respectable sense of humour, that man.”
    “Pause for laugh,” Moppett said very offensively.
    Miss Cartell, who had in fact thrown back her head to laugh, blushed painfully and looked at her ward with such an air of baffled vulnerability that Nicola, who had been thinking how patronizing and arrogant she was, felt sorry for her and furious with Moppett.
    So, evidently, did Mr. Period. “My dear Mary,” he said. “That was
not
the prettiest of remarks.”
    “Quite so. Precisely,” Mr.