Talk of the Town Read Online Free PDF Page A

cheque.
    “What notice? She didn’t mention anything about a notice,” Effie answered.
    Daphne had already perceived that her aunt was not quite as bright as she might be and went off to peruse the Observer for the notice. After much searching she found the note in the social column and fell to wondering. Lady Pamela had been worried and had made a point of not having her debt mentioned. She had come here to pay so Auntie wouldn’t mention it in her book, Daphne soon deduced. What a horrid mind!
    While she was finishing her conjecture, there was another caller announced and a Major Deitweiller came in. After the merest mention of surprise at seeing Effie’s name in the paper after so many years, his business, too, soon emerged. He owed her a thousand pounds for the purchase of his commission in the Army and now, as a respectable, well-to-do major, he wished to repay the loan. He did not mention interest, nor did Daphne nor Effie. He paid a thousand in cash and left very soon afterwards, with the casual mention that he supposed her having helped him all those years ago would not be in the book. His wife—he had married a Miss Norton from Warwick, one of the Nortons—didn’t know of his lowly beginnings, he laughed nervously.
    “Oh, no, it is more of a book of travel,” Effie smiled. “Though, as I'll have been looking through my memoirs these past days, a good many stories from London occur to me that might make interesting reading. Do you remember, Major, that young Harcourt fellow who used to chum around with you? He joined up at the same time as yourself.” He had also joined up through the same financial arrangement as Deitweiller, though it was not said. “He was dangling after Lord Severn’s girl and had a pretty little actress on the side.”
    “Yes, I see him often,” Deitweiller said. “He plans to come to call on you shortly, Ma’am.”
    “That’s good. I look forward to seeing him.”
    “I’ll tell him, Mrs. Pealing. Good day.” Harcourt was informed of the matter, and sold his team of greys and his wife’s pearls to raise the wind.
    “He was in a bit of a hurry,” Effie said to her niece. “I was just going to remind him of the night Harcourt rode his horse up the front steps and into my hallway, but I suppose I shouldn’t relate such a story as that in the book. He is a Colonel now, and stands very high on his dignity, I daresay. Funny to think of all those young bucks having risen so high in the world and not a brain to speak of among the lot of them.”
    Before they sat down to lunch they had a third caller—a Mr. Munro—coming to repay Effie a debt of two hundred pounds for some matter she had forgotten long since and was sure she had not bothered to record in her memoirs. She remembered Munro, but not why he insisted he owed her two hundred pounds.
    “Was there ever such a thing, Daphne?” she chirped merrily. “Twenty-four hundred pounds in one morning coming at us out of the blue. All my old friends remembering me and coming to pay what they owe. None of them knew where I was living, and that is why they haven’t been to call sooner. It was that notice in the paper that has brought them back to me. How happy I am I decided to write it after all. Didn’t I tell you I had a feeling things would happen? My feelings are never wrong. It’s a fact. I am not clever, but I feel things before they happen."
    “Do you think it is just friendship that brings them back?” Daphne asked. Her own opinion was growing stronger with each visit that it was fear of revelation in the book that brought them.
    “What else could it be, my dear?”
    Daphne mentioned her own opinion and was talked down as being suspicious and mean-natured, “which you get from James, dear, and nothing can be done about it; but I do wish you would not take that notion into your head or you will spoil all our fun.”
    “I could be wrong. They’re your friends, and you must know them better than I.”
    “I should