Kind Are Her Answers Read Online Free PDF Page A

heaved his legs over the edge of the bed, and, telephone in hand, felt for his slippers. He thought casually that the information was selective for a lay person’s. “Right. I’ll come straight over. Will you give her a dose of the special mixture at once, please?”
    “The dark brown one? I’ve given her that. It seemed to do her good.”
    “Splendid. Don’t worry. I’ll be there in eight or ten minutes.”
    A quick dresser, he was there in seven. It had rained, and would rain again. A wet, furred moon filled in the spaces between the poplars with its thin wash of light. Leaves were still falling, and the trees showed now in patches the stripped outline of branch and twig against the sky. The lamp in the porch had been switched on; its yellow spread fuzzily, like a blot, in the mists of the night. A faint wind in the upper branches shook down heavy drops that flashed into suddenly extinguished diamonds as they passed the circle of the headlamps; he could hear the hiss of unseen water flung outward by the tires.
    As he stepped out of the car the front door was opened by a girl in a Chinese-blue dressing gown of quilted silk. She looked smaller than she was in the high hall, with its stagheads ten feet up and still far from the ceiling, the towering carved coat-stand, the assegais and the palms; small but concentrated, the silk of her gown and dark red sheen of her hair focussing the light like spar in a cave. For a moment her unexpectedness linked itself in Kit’s mind with the colours of the night, and the place looked different, as if he were seeing it for the first time. Its dusty oddities drew together into a mood, a powerful strangeness; against this the present business of his mind passed like the first waking thoughts against the background of the last dream, scarcely aware of what had tinged them.
    “How quick you’ve been.” She spoke with ordinary, pleasant courtesy; but her voice was hushed because of the stillness of the house, and the slight words took from this a reasonless significance.
    “Has there been any change since you rang me?” he asked.
    “Yes. She looks so much better that I’m ashamed to have got you out of bed.”
    “Oh, that’s all right.” He scarcely knew that he had smiled as he spoke, so that her answering smile seemed sudden and surprising. Her face in repose was compact and grave; square-boned, but clear in outline; with eyes widely spaced, the brows slanting up a little. He had thought it unrevealing; but her smile was as open as a small boy’s, a personal enjoyment rather than a social gesture. Her eyelids looked drowsy, and her skin, unpowdered, had a childish bloom of sleep. She had on a white silk nightgown which showed a little at the hem of her wrap but was too low to show at the neck.
    Kit said, “Well, I’d better take a look at her, anyway,” in his hospital voice. As she led the way to the door he felt he had been loitering a long time, though Pedlow would have delayed him minutes longer.
    Miss Heath was awake. Propped in her high pillows—she had difficulty with her breathing if she lay flat—she had reached for the heavy Bible with its brass clasps and embossed black boards, which lived at night on the table beside her bed, and was reading the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. She was still panting with the effort of lifting it onto her knees. When Kit came in she marked the place carefully with her finger before she looked up.
    “Why, is this Dr. Anderson? Christie, my dear, you don’t mean to tell me you’ve been sending for poor Dr. Anderson at this time of night? Why, it must be after twelve o’clock.” She moved about in the bed, trying to peer at the alabaster and gilt clock on the mantelshelf, which said fifteen minutes to four. The Bible slid sideways out of her lap, and Kit and the girl moved forward at the same moment to catch it. They got it between them just as it reached the edge of the bed; the girl’s fingers became caught for a