The Longer Bodies Read Online Free PDF Page A

beauty of the evening and attracted by the unusual character of her surroundings, Priscilla, who entirely failed to recognize the environs of the house for those she had known from her father’s descriptions and stories, walked down the steps, through the wooden doorway, and on to the sports ground. She pursued her way upon the turf which bordered the cinder track for about fifty yards until she came to an open gate. She passed through this, and found herself facing one of the huts which old Mrs Puddequet had caused to be erected for the housing of the athletes while they were in training.
    A slight sound behind her caused her to look round. A light-haired, weedy young man in a flannel suit was standing in the gateway leading into the sports ground. It was Great-aunt Puddequet’s adopted grandson, Timon Anthony.
    â€˜Go indoors! Go indoors!’ he said urgently.
    Priscilla gazed in amazement.
    â€˜I mean it,’ said the light-haired young man. ‘And get those brothers of yours back to London.’
    â€˜I don’t understand you,’ said Priscilla frigidly. ‘What do you mean?’
    The young man waved his hand expressively.
    â€˜All this low-lying land is most unhealthy,’ he informed her. ‘All the infections that the sun sucks up from bogs, fens, flats—’
    Priscilla laughed.
    The young man shook his head at her. ‘I really don’t think the night air here does anybody any good, so come along indoors,’ he said.
    He took her by the left elbow and piloted her back by the way she had come. At the top of the stone steps he released her arm and walked away without a word.
    â€˜Well,’ said Priscilla, as she leaned on the balustrade and looked at his retreating figure.
    At the bottom of the stone steps he turned and waved to her.
    Priscilla knitted her brows. He seemed a queer boy, she thought. She wondered how much he liked the idea of a group of his patron’s relatives coming along to wrest from him the inheritance he had been brought up to believe would be his own.
    â€˜It’s jolly unfair of Great-aunt Puddequet,’ thought Priscilla, as she stepped inside the great outer door of the house. ‘And he looks as though he’s taking it very well.’
    She put a question to the old lady next day.
    â€˜Timon Anthony?’ squealed Great-aunt Puddequet venomously. ‘No, Grandniece! No! The puppy wants to go on the stage! On the stage, I say! I won’t leave him a penny-piece, and so I’ve told him!’
    â€˜But won’t he have a chance of—of running and jumping with the other boys?’ asked Priscilla, whose sense of fairness was up in arms.
    â€˜Run?’ squealed Great-aunt Puddequet. ‘Yes, he can run from his creditors when he’s run through his allowance! That’s the amount of running he’ll do!’
    And she refused to hear or to say another word.

Chapter Three
Rabbit and Javelin
I
    â€˜ IT’S A FUNNY thing,’ said Joseph Herring meditatively. He went from hutch to hutch and counted again.
    â€˜There’s three Belgian ’ares and two white Angoras—that’s all right on that side. But them young Flemish Giants—blowed if I don’t think there was three in each ’utch! But there’s only two in ’ere.’
    He counted again to make certain, and then scratched his jaw.
    â€˜It’s a bloomin’ rum go, that is! I’ll ’ave to see into it. The old girl won’t ’arf say ’er prayers if she gets to know anythink about it being gorn.’
II
    It was the beautiful morning of Friday, April 18th, and the athletes had been in training for eleven days. As the day was so fine and warm, Great-aunt Puddequet, having emerged triumphant from her diurnal battle with the cook, signified her intention of going to watch the lads at practice on the sports field.
    The first person she and her escort encountered was the trainer Kost, a