The Uninvited Guests Read Online Free PDF Page A

into a symphony.
    Charlotte, having wandered into the kitchen, paused at the sight of so much plenty. It erupted towards her.
    ‘I suppose all the cupboards must be emptied, Mrs Trieves?’ she asked Florence sourly.
    ‘That way I know where I am to start with,’ responded Florence with equal acidity.
    A five-pound paper bag of sugar, rolled down some way, stood on the corner of the dresser with a wooden scoop dug into its inviting crystalline landscapes. Charlotte could not resist digging the scoop further into the sugar to feel the small, dry grindings.
    ‘Have you everything planned all the way to Monday?’
    ‘I have. Emerald and I.’
    ‘I envy you cooking it – rather that than talk to the guests.’
    ‘A telegram came.’
    ‘Oh yes?’
    Florence Trieves took an opened telegram from her apron pocket and handed it to Charlotte.
    ‘Must there be no secrets?’ said Charlotte vaguely.
    ‘You know there aren’t any.’
    Charlotte perused the telegram as Florence undid each of the five buttons of her black cuffs and rolled up her sleeves to the bony elbows. ‘Myrtle will be down directly she finishes the bedrooms,’ she said. ‘It would be this day of all days that Pearl Meadows cries off sick—’
    Pearl Meadows was the housemaid, part time, who had beat a hasty and highly inconvenient retreat that morning, pleading illness.
    ‘Oh, dash it all! Deceit!’ cried Charlotte, and Florence looked up questioningly. ‘Camilla Sutton has influenza – I should be very surprised indeed if that were anywhere near the truth, the harridan – and has sent Patience with the brother, Ernest, who is a dreadful clot.’
    ‘Camilla Sutton? Do we know her?’
    Charlotte was irritable. ‘You know we do! They used to come very often when Horace was here – alive.’
    ‘Ah. Yes. Well.’
    ‘ Green-eyes , Florence – I like her. Perhaps she doesn’t like me any more.’
    ‘Still, Edmund will talk to Emerald and Clovis, and you’ll be free—’
    ‘It’s Ernest , remember? And Emerald and Clovis won’t want to talk to him. Patience is a long toil up a muddy field as it is; he’s beyond horror.’
    ‘I seem to recall.’
    ‘He was a weasly, swotty little child – forever catching things in nets and staring. He encouraged Emerald in messing about with inappropriate things. Now she’s reading something at Cambridge and he’s studying medicine, apparently. He would. ’
    ‘Oh, I see. A scientist.’ This last was said in tones of dreary condemnation.
    ‘With red hair.’
    ‘Lord, yes. And a squint.’
    ‘That’s the fellow – spectacles. ’
    ‘Hardly his fault.’
    ‘You might say that, Florence, but although many may need them, only a certain type of person wears them. I prefer a passionate, squinting man than one who corrects his sight with wiry little spectacles and is in command of himself.’
    ‘His corrected glances will be aimed at Emerald, I imagine, rather than you,’ smiled Florence, spitefully.
    ‘Or you!’ said Charlotte; then, veering from this thorny subject, ‘Will there be cake?’
    ‘There will. Chocolate. With green roses.’
    ‘ Green? ’
    ‘For Emerald.’
    ‘Roses aren’t green, dear.’
    ‘Emerald’s sugar ones are. Dyed and perfectly sculpted last night.’
    ‘By Myrtle?’
    ‘By me. And candlelight.’
    ‘I should think they’ll look most peculiar, and Ernest and Patience Sutton will return to Berkshire with the impression that we’re unfit for society.’
    ‘Aren’t we unfit?’ rejoined Florence.
    Charlotte burst, very suddenly, into loud laughter, a bawdy Titania.
    ‘Oh Lord,’ she belted, her voice all at once strident, ‘that we are, Florence!’ And Florence, too, bending forward to allow herself to do it in her corsets, laughed with her, breathily, like a concertina, unused for a while and warming itself up.
    ‘I shall leave you, unfit as I am, to your baking,’ said Charlotte, exiting the room, and throwing over her shoulder, ‘What’s for