The Alington Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page A

Garsty—the whole seventeen years of it.
    Miss Garstone was to go away that evening. She was to go back to her school, so they said good-bye at the door of the cottage. At the last moment she did a thing that surprised her. It really surprised her very much. She put out a hand and stopped Jenny at the front door.
    “There’s just one thing—” she said.
    Jenny stood still.
    “What is it, Miss Garstone?”
    “It’s not my business—I know that,” said Miss Garstone. “But my sister was very fond of you, and I just want to say—” She stopped and broke off. What did she want to say? She didn’t know. She was behaving like a fool. She took up her words again with a feeling that they were not her words at all.
    “I just want to say that if at any time you don’t want to stay with the Forbeses, I shall be very pleased to do anything I can to help or advise you for my sister’s sake. I should like you to feel that I don’t say things that I don’t mean. Good-bye.”
    Miss Garstone did not shut the door at once. She stood with her hand on the knob and watched Jenny cross the road and pass into the grounds of Alington House.
    Chapter V
    Jenny walked slowly up the drive. It was done. It was finished. It was all over. She was starting a new life. There wasn’t any letter which would change everything for her. Poor darling Garsty had just imagined it. It was silly of her not to have thought of that for herself. And there were Miss Garstone’s eyes too… But she was glad about one thing. No, there were two things to be glad about. Miss Garstone had let her look for the letter her own self, and just at the end she had been quite astonishingly nice. “Quite human,” said Jenny to herself, and with that she came round the last corner of the drive and caught her breath. Because there at the front door stood Mac’s little red car, and that meant that Mac was there, and perhaps Alan, too. In the back of her mind was the thought, “They wouldn’t have come down in time for the funeral. It wasn’t so very clever to come down the same day.” Because the funeral had only been that morning, and it would have been better to let a day or two go by.
    There was anger in her as she had that thought. Didn’t he care what people would think? And the answer was plain enough. It was no, he didn’t, he didn’t care a jot. What he wanted to do he did. What the village thought about him didn’t matter at all. He could get away with it.
    As she came across the hall, Meg darted at her and caught her wrist.
    “Ssh—they’ve come! Did you see the car? Mac and Alan—they’ve both come! I do think they might have got here in time for the funeral—don’t you? I said so to Alan, and he pinched my arm and said, ‘Ssh!’ I expect I’ve got a black and blue pinch mark on it, and if I have—” She paused dramatically.
    Jenny could not help laughing a little.
    “What will you do?”
    Meg hopped on one leg.
    “I don’t know, but I’ll think of something. When I’m in bed and there’s nothing to disturb me. Oh, what have you got there? What is it—may I see? Oh, it’s a little chest of drawers!”
    Jenny nodded.
    “Yes, it was Garsty’s. Her sister gave it to me. It—it was very nice of her.”
    “Well, she’s got everything else,” said Meg in a tone which dismissed Miss Garstone with finality.
    They were half way up the stairs, when Mac came down them. As always when she saw him again, he made the same deep impression on Jenny. He was so terribly good-looking. He took after his mother, but where she wore her good looks with an air of being disillusioned, in him everything was heightened by a most visible air of enjoyment. And why wouldn’t he enjoy his life? He had looks, and health, and youth, and an adoring mother. And he had Alington.
    He came down two steps at a time with both his hands out.
    “My poor little Jenny!” he said in his warm voice. “I was just coming down to dig you out of the Garstone