Ladies’ Bane Read Online Free PDF Page A

Ione checked the thought that it was just as well that Barbara hadn’t walked in at, say, four o’clock in the morning to find a strange girl in her bed.
    Nannie went on talking. By the time Ione was dressed, with a pair of Barbara’s stockings to take the place of her ruined ones, she knew what an old and distinguished firm of architects Jim Severn belonged to. There were two uncles in it, and one of them wouldn’t be very long before he retired, and then Mr. Jim would go up a step.
    “His father died when the children were still in the nursery-him and Miss Barbara-and their mother married again. But she didn’t live long either, so you may say they never had anyone but each other, Mr. Jim and Miss Barbara.” Ione listened, but she had to think as well. The first thing to be done was to ring up Wanetree and placate Norris, who would certainly be feeling fierce about her failure either to return or to let them know that she was not coming back last night. She ought to have done it before really-not in the middle of the night, but more or less at crack of dawn, which at this time of year would be getting on for a quarter to eight.
    Norris was Cousin Eleanor’s maid, and a domestic tyrant of forty years’ standing. She answered the call in a very bad temper indeed and scolded Ione as if she were five years old.
    “Staying out all night, and not so much as troubling to give us a ring! I’m sure I don’t know what things are coming to! And if Miss Eleanor isn’t downright ill, thinking something might have happened-well, it’s no thanks to those that should know better, and that I will say, and nobody is going to get me from it!” Ione took a deep patient breath. She really had known Norris since she was five, and the only thing you could do with her when she was in a mood was just to go on saying whatever you had to say until some of it got in. “Listen, Norrie-”
    “And don’t you Norrie me, Miss Ione! There’s those that can have dust thrown in their eyes, and those that can’t
nor
won’t!”
    “Norrie, do just
listen! There was a fog
-F, O, G-fog.”
    “Nor I don’t want things spelled at me neither!”
    “Look in the morning papers! It was the worst fog ever. I fell down some area steps, and I never got near a telephone till half past three, and then I thought I’d better let it alone.”
    “I should think so indeed-waking the whole house in the middle of the night!”
    “Norrie-you didn’t tell Cousin Eleanor, did you?… No, I thought you wouldn’t. It’s so bad for her to worry.”
    There was a portentous sniff at the other end of the line.
    “And whose fault would it be if she did? Only for me she’d be half off her head by now, but I’m not so short of trouble that I’d go telling her what there’s no need for her to fret about! She doesn’t know but what I’m taking you in a cup of tea at this identical moment.” Ione rang off with relief and got dressed. She put in some good work on the face. Nobody wants to be remembered as a green wraith floating in a fog. Barbara seemed to have brought Nannie very well up to date, before she actually approved the result, commenting favourably on Ione’s choice of lipstick. She had mended the tear in the fur coat and sponged and pressed the skirt of the brown suit. The hat went on nicely. Altogether quite a pleasant transformation scene.
    Men hadn’t to bother of course. Jim Severn looked exactly the same at breakfast as he had done the night before under a street-lamp. There was a moment when this breakfast-table meeting seemed stranger than anything that had happened last night. This time yesterday neither of them knew that the other existed. Only six hours ago neither of them had the faintest idea what the other looked like. And now here they were, sitting down to breakfast together in his flat. If only Norrie knew! But even Norrie would be satisfied with Nannie as a chaperon. She began to laugh, and he saw how quick and sensitive her face