Sheiks and Adders Read Online Free PDF Page B

increasingly misdoubted the whole odd exploit which he had undertaken.
    The young woman who took his ticket handed him a programme in return. And she gave him an appraising look as she did so.
    ‘There’s going to be a licensed bar open later,’ she said.
    ‘Is there, indeed?’ This brisk assessment of his predominant interest as likely to be in alcoholic refreshment naturally didn’t gratify Appleby very much. ‘I suppose outlaws are given to clinking the cannikin whenever the opportunity occurs. If I’d come as a knight, it would be another matter. A true knight is a total abstainer, as Chaucer tells us. “Himself drank water of the well, as did the knight Sir Percivel”. So you see–’
    ‘No more of this, for goddes dignitee.’ The young woman (thus revealing an academic background) was understandably abrupt. ‘You must be the man my sister met in the wood.’
    ‘Yes, Miss Chitfield, I am. My name is John Appleby.’
    ‘I can’t think why you’ve bothered to turn up to all this nonsense. Did Cherry put on one of her turns?’
    ‘I wouldn’t describe it as that at all. But she was a little upset. And that brings us back to knights. Is the young man called Tibby still going to be obliged to dress up as one?’
    ‘Oh, yes – I suppose so. He and Cherry had some idiotic affair cooked up, and it would have been perfectly okay and raised the required laugh and tepid applause. But my father just wouldn’t have it. I can’t think why.’
    ‘Neither can Cherry.’ Appleby glanced across the gardens and prepared to proceed, since several people were approaching behind him. ‘By the way, when does something begin to happen?’
    ‘Have a look at that programme. Not that it will help you much, since it’s all going to be a bit of a muddle. People are supposed to wander around as if it’s a garden party. But they’re also supposed to watch things in a kind of open-air theatre that has been set up beyond the tennis court. And there’s a raffle and a man departing in a hot-air balloon for China or heaven knows where, and an auction sale of pretentious junk, and a band from some regiment or other, and heaven knows what else as well. My father goes in for what you might call overkill. So take your pick, Sir John. Or my lord of Lancaster, perhaps I ought to say.’
    ‘I believe that’s a discredited view of Robin Hood’s true rank.’
    ‘The English love a lord – so their top bandit has to be one. And Shakespeare, you know, is believed by some to have been a whole committee of lords. And now move on, and let me cope with those tiresome people behind you. How I damn-well wish it was bedtime.’
    Thus dismissed (not without a touch of the younger Miss Chitfield’s uncertain command of the usages of polite society), Appleby did move on. But then Miss Chitfield called after him.
    ‘Oh, I forgot! There’s archery down in the meadow. Just your thing, I’d imagine.’
    Appleby answered this pleasantry merely by elevating his long-bow in the air. He found that he was now manipulating the awkward thing as if it were an alpenstock. And in the distance he had just caught sight of Colonel and Mrs Birch-Blackie. He might have guessed they’d be around, and in his present absurd rig he had no wish whatever to encounter them. He’d minimize the risk of this, he told himself, if he steered clear of that licensed bar.
     
    What had been erected beyond the tennis court was not exactly a theatre, but it was a good deal more than a bare stage or platform. It had an air, indeed, of simplicity and even improvisation, as if it had been run up on the orders of an indulgent parent to meet some passing theatrical ambition on the part of his children. But there was something a little deceptive about this. The whole effect was unobtrusively elegant, and there seemed to be an equally unobtrusive provision of more stage apparatus than would be at all necessary for any casually organized amateur pageant. The frame and setting