The Alington Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page B

this is, and not for grown-up young gentlemen like you are now and have been these four years past. Get along with you, for I heard the mistress calling, you, and she won’t be a bit pleased if she finds you here!” She turned to Jenny. “Will that be all, miss?”
    “Yes,” said Jenny. “Thank you very much, Carter.”
    Carter turned and went out of the room. Alan took a couple of steps towards the door, and came back again.
    “I’d better go if they’re expecting me,” he said, and paused, hesitating. And went.
    Jenny turned round to the table and sat down.
    Chapter VI
    Mac and Alan only stayed for a bare twenty-four hours. Mac was two years down from Oxford and in process of becoming a barrister. Jenny was still not quite sure how this giddy height was to be attained, but she had very exciting visions of Mac scintillating with talent and good looks, sweeping all before him in some spectacular trial. This was when she wasn’t angry with him, when he charmed, and she let herself be charmed. It had not got very far. He had kissed her once when she had a tray in her hands and couldn’t stop him. She hadn’t wanted him to kiss her— not like that. She had very nearly dropped the tray, which she wouldn’t have been carrying if Carter hadn’t come over queer just as she was going to take it in. Mrs. Bolton, the cook, didn’t carry trays—she was very firm about that. And Mary, the house-parlour maid, who didn’t live in but came up from the village, certainly wasn’t going to do anything about it when it was her afternoon off and she was going with her young man to the pictures. Jenny had come out of the dark passage which led to the kitchen, and he had taken her by surprise. At the time it had just been fun, but when she remembered, it hurt. But then everything did hurt now. She didn’t want the touch-and-go game, the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow kind of thing that had been fun in the past. She wanted something she could lean on and trust. There had been Garsty for that, and now there wasn’t Garsty any more, and she wanted Garsty—oh, how she wanted Garsty!
    She didn’t think a great deal about Alan. He was a boy, just down from Oxford. Quite a nice boy if he could get over being so afraid of his mother—and of Mac. He was very like his father to look at. She wasn’t so sure if he was really like him. She had been very fond of Colonel Forbes, and she had been aware of something in him which she missed in Alan. Colonel Forbes had not so much given way to his wife as stood out of her way. More and more as the years went on, he had avoided her, not in the way of offence or bad temper, but where their opinions differed—well, he made a point of not being there to be differed from. And more and more he had withdrawn into his library.
    Jenny used to come in by the window and talk to him. He was a wonderful friend to have. He knew a tremendous lot about birds, and beasts, and all the country things. She loved him very much, and she had grieved terribly when he died. Alan was grieved too, but not Mac. And not Mrs. Forbes. “She doesn’t mind a bit. I know she doesn’t,” she had said to Garsty when they came home after the funeral. “Jenny, you shouldn’t say that—you can’t judge.” That was Garsty all over. She was so kind, even to the people who had no kindness in them—and you can’t go farther than that. She remembered her own outburst—“How can you say she minds, when she’s got her hair so beautifully done!” Well, it was a schoolgirl’s judgment, but when she looked back on it Jenny was quite sure that it had been a true one. When people are broken-hearted they may see that their hair is neat, but they don’t bother about whether it’s becoming.
    She thought that Alan had cared—she hoped that he had. He was abroad when his father died, and she didn’t see him for three months. Mac didn’t care, or only just a little. But then Mac was different. Jenny didn’t explain to herself