Hare Sitting Up Read Online Free PDF

at once what sort of parent or grandparent Clwyd would be. He wouldn’t be a pest, but he would expect a good deal. Nor would he waste time in seeing that he got it. He might be – at a guess – chairman of one of the joint stock banks. He had a timetable for today and every other day, and he had the art of conducting in apparent leisure interviews which he knew would in fact end in twelve or in twenty-five minutes’ time. Juniper decided to cut out any remarks about the weather.
    ‘How can I help you?’ he asked. It was the association with banking that prompted him to this form of words. His own bank manager said just that.
    ‘You can show me your cricket field.’
    ‘Why – certainly.’ Juniper rose, greatly surprised. He knew that there were prospective parents capable of beginning their investigations decidedly on the athletic side, but it hadn’t struck him that Mr Clwyd – who so clearly belonged if not to the intellectual at least to the managerial classes – might be one of them. ‘We can go out by this window. There’s a sett of badgers in the corner over by Splaine Wood, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. And as for the pitch – well, it’s not too bad. I’ve got a very reasonable groundsman now, I’m glad to say.’
    With this and other professional patter, Juniper led the way into the open air. Mr Clwyd was seriously attentive – but less, Juniper felt, to the substance of the information he was receiving than to the manner in which it was being offered to him. Clwyd walked with deliberation; he carried an umbrella and gloves; he wore a bowler hat not very well accommodated to a summer afternoon in the country. But, despite all this, there was again the impression that he was very little disposed to waste time. He might almost have been in a hurry – and in a hurry to size Juniper up. Juniper didn’t reflect that his awareness of this in his visitor was the consequence of a not wholly common acuteness of perception in himself. And although there was something in the situation that made him indefinably uneasy, he nevertheless continued with what he privately called sales talk – and still on the assumption that Mr Clwyd was chiefly, or even exclusively, interested in games. They had beaten their chief rivals, Merton House, handsomely this year. And next year it looked as if they were going to have a really promising slow bowler.
    Mr Clwyd gave these remarks his attention until they reached the actual pitch. He even prodded the pitch in a considering way with his umbrella. Then he spoke again for the first time since they had left the study.
    ‘Mr Juniper, my name isn’t Clwyd. Nor is this my beard. I’m not sure you haven’t guessed as much.’
    Juniper was sufficiently perturbed to come abruptly to a halt. And at this the man who was not Mr Clwyd came to a halt too, raised his umbrella and pointed it towards the nearer horizon. He might have been engaged in some polite topographical inquiry.
    ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand you, sir.’ Juniper spoke with a proper stiffness. He was quite sure that his visitor wasn’t mad, and he saw no occasion for tenderness. ‘Are we not wasting each other’s time?’
    ‘I propose to waste as little time as possible. Mr Juniper, I have asked you to bring me out to your cricket field because it is a spot where we quite certainly can’t be overheard.’ The visitor paused, made a half turn, and this time pointed with the same air of courteous interest to a nearby spinney. ‘It’s most unlikely that we are being watched, but you will have to forgive this professional pantomime, all the same.’
    ‘Do I understand that you are an actor, sir?’ It was in as chilly a tone as he could manage that Juniper asked this question. He was beginning to feel angry – angry and, he had to admit to himself, alarmed. It was the same alarm – to be more frank, it was the same acute private anxiety – that had welled up into consciousness during