Latter End Read Online Free PDF

heard the click of the receiver. She gave a little start, turned round, and ran upstairs again. She was panting when she came into Minnie’s room.
    “Ellie, darling!”
    “Min, I was too late. Lois was there—talking—”
    “To Mrs. Lethbridge?”
    Ellie nodded.
    Minnie gave a very small sigh.
    “Well, it can’t be helped. My dear, you shouldn’t have run—you are quite out of breath.”
    “It’s nothing—it doesn’t matter. Min, you should have heard her! ‘Good people are scarce—we must take care of her!’ What Julia calls her honey-snake voice. And—oh, Min, she said Mrs. Lethbridge mustn’t count on you for the work-parties any more. But you’ll fight that, won’t you? It’s just the one pleasure you’ve got.”
    Minnie stood quite still. After a moment she said,
    “I’m not very good at fighting, my dear. And it upsets the house, and I wouldn’t want to do that.”
    Jimmy’s name wasn’t mentioned, but it was there in both their thoughts. It was Jimmy who mustn’t be upset. Minnie would do anything and bear anything to prevent that. They both knew it, but today for the first time Ellie stopped finding it a matter of course. “She feels like I do about Ronnie.” The idea just went through her mind and was gone. She didn’t stop to think about it then, but it had changed something. She wouldn’t ever quite take Minnie for granted again. She had been there for so long, they were all so used to her being devoted to them, that the quality of that devotion had never been questioned. Ellie had begun to question it.
    She saw Minnie smile in her patient way.
    “You must dress, my dear. I’ll come and help you. We won’t think of anything unpleasant tonight, with Antony and Julia coming. Such a pleasure! Why, we ought to be quite gay—”
    As they crossed into Ellie’s room, she went on talking.
    “You can’t think how pleased I am that Julia is coming here at last. It has been very, very kind of Mrs. Lethbridge to put her up when she came down to see you, but it has made a good deal of talk—her not staying here, I mean. And I am sure it has distressed your brother and—and Mrs. Latter. You’ll wear your blue—won’t you?”
    Ellie said, “Yes.”
    She hung up the cotton frock and slipped into the blue crepe-de-chine. It went on only too easily.
    “Fluff up your hair and put on a little colour, my dear. You don’t want Julia to see you looking pale.”
    Ellie was rubbing cream into her face, with a towel round her shoulders. She ought to have done it first before she put on her dress. She couldn’t bother to take it off now. That was the way it went—you scrambled into your clothes and scrambled out of them again. There was no time to do anything properly. This was the last of her face-cream. She took up the powder puff and said,
    “If Julia has a row with Lois—Min, I’m just terrified she will.”
    “Oh, my dear, she wouldn’t do that!”
    Ellie said in a despairing voice, “She might.”
    “Oh, no!”
    “She might want to have one.”
    Minnie gave a little gasp.
    “No one could want to have a quarrel!”
    “Julia could.”
    “Oh, my dear, why?”
    “To blow things up. Julia’s like that—you know she is. And she hates Lois like poison.”
    In the mirror she could see Minnie standing there just behind her. She looked almost as if she might be going to faint again. She said in a low, shaken voice,
    “Hating is poison.”
    CHAPTER 5
    The only person who really enjoyed the evening was Jimmy Latter. Everyone else was relieved when it was over, but Jimmy was as pleased as Punch. He was gregarious and sociable to the last degree. It was two years since he had had all his family round him, and it delighted him to see the table full again—Ellie on one side of him, Julia on the other, Antony next to Ellie, Minnie next to Julia, and his beautiful Lois smiling at him from the bottom of the table. It was the old family party, with Lois added. Lois—his wife—his