Hand in Glove Read Online Free PDF Page B

Cartell agreed. “You should exercise more discipline, Connie.”
    Leonard said: “The only way with Moppett is to beat her like a carpet.”
    “Care to try?” she asked him.
    Alfred announced luncheon.
    It was the most uncomfortable meal Nicola had ever eaten. The entire party was at cross purposes. Everybody appeared to be up to something indefinable.
    Miss Cartell had bought a new car. Leonard spoke of it with languid approval. Moppett said they had seen a Scorpion for sale in George Copper’s garage. Leonard spoke incomprehensibly of its merits.
    “Matter of fact,” he said, “I’d quite like to buy it. Trade in my own heap with him, of course.” He leant back in his chair and whistled quietly through his teeth.
    “Shall we look at it again?” Moppett suggested, grandly.
    “No harm in looking, is there?”
    Nicola suddenly thought: That was a pre-planned bit of dialogue. Alfred returned with an envelope which he placed before Mr. Period.
    “What’s this?” Mr. Period asked pettishly. He peered through his eyeglass.
    “From the Rectory, sir. The person suggested it was immediate.”
    “I do so dislike interruptions at luncheon,” Mr. Period complained. “ ’Scuse, everybody?” he added playfully.
    His guests made acquiescent noises. He read what appeared to be a very short letter and changed colour.
    “No answer,” he said to Alfred. “Or rather-say I’ll call personally upon the Rector.”
    Alfred withdrew. Mr. Period, after a fidgety interval and many glances at Mr. Cartell, said: “I’m very sorry, Hal, but I’m afraid your Pixie has created a parochial
crise
.”
    Mr. Cartell said: “Oh, dear. What?”
    “At the moment she, with some half-dozen other — ah — boon companions, is rioting in the Vicar’s seed beds. There is a Mothers’ Union luncheon in progress, but none of them has succeeded in catching her. It couldn’t be more awkward.”
    Nicola had an uproarious vision of mothers thundering fruitlessly among rectorial flower beds. Miss Cartell broke into one of her formidable gusts of laughter.
    “You always were hopeless with dogs, Boysie,” she shouted. “Why you keep that ghastly bitch!”
    “She’s extremely well bred, Connie. I’ve been advised to enter her for the parish dog show.”
    “My God, who by? The Rector?” Miss Cartell asked with a bellow of laughter.
    “I have been advised,” Mr. Cartell repeated stuffily.
    “We’ll have to have a freak class.”
    “Are you entering your Pekingese?”
    “They’re very keen I should, so I might as well, I suppose. Hardly fair to the others, but she’d be a draw, of course.”
    “For people that like lapdogs, no doubt.”
    Mr. Period intervened: “I’m afraid you’ll have to do something about it, Hal,” he said. “Nobody else can control her.”
    “Alfred can.”
    “Alfred is otherwise engaged.”
    “She’s on heat, of course.”
    “Really, Connie!”
    Mr. Cartell, pink in the face, rose disconsolately, but at that moment there appeared in the garden a disheveled clergyman dragging the overexcited Pixie by her collar. They were watched sardonically by a group of workmen.
    Mr. Cartell hurried from the room and reappeared beyond the windows with Alfred.
    “It’s too much,” Mr. Period said. “Forgive me!”
    He, too, left the room and joined the group in the garden.
    Leonard and Moppett, making extremely uninhibited conversation, went to the window and stood there, clinging to each other in an ecstasy of enjoyment. They were observed by Mr. Period and Mr. Cartell. There followed a brief scene in which the Rector, his Christian forbearance clearly exercised to its limit, received the apologies of both gentlemen, patted Mr. Period, but not Mr. Cartell, on the shoulder, and took his leave. Alfred lugged Pixie, who squatted back on her haunches in protest, out of sight, and the two gentlemen returned — very evidently in high dudgeon with each other. Leonard and Moppett made little or no attempt to