The Watersplash Read Online Free PDF Page B

much pleased and interested.
    “Now don’t tell me that was Edward Random! Or perhaps I should say don’t tell me it wasn’t, because I could see that it was, and when you ran out of the shop like that I thought—I really thought—you were going to drop all those apples!”
    “So did I!”
    “Did Mrs. Alexander lend you the basket? It wasn’t one of ours. And what did you have in the paper bag?… Tomatoes? Well, I hope they were ripe. That was one of the things Nurse Brown used to be so tiresome about—just took whatever they gave her and never thought of looking to see if they were ripe. Well, well, why do you go on talking to me about tomatoes, when I want to hear about Edward Random? You seemed very pleased to see him.”
    “Oh, I was!”
    Miss Ora Blake had a large round pink face, large round blue eyes, and a lot of white fluffy curls surmounted by two bows of blue satin ribbon and a little frill of lace. She gazed solemnly at Clarice and said,
    “When I was young a girl wouldn’t have said that.”
    “Why not? We saw a great deal of each other when I was here before.”
    “Seven years ago.”
    Clarice laughed.
    “We were very friendly, you know—and I don’t forget my friends.”
    Seven years ago! Miss Ora began to make calculations. Edward couldn’t have been much more than a schoolboy—eighteen at the outside. Because he wasn’t more than twenty-five now. She remembered him in his pram. Yes, he would have been eighteen when Miss Dean came down to nurse James Random through that attack of influenza. And she was already trained then. She might look young, but she must be several years older than Edward. That bright colour of hers was deceptive. Miss Ora decided to her own satisfaction that Clarice Dean might quite easily be as much as thirty.
    She said tartly,
    “That was a very large basket of apples.”
    “Mrs. Alexander said—”
    “Mrs. Alexander wants to sell her fruit. But my sister Mildred won’t be pleased—she won’t be pleased at all. She will think we have been extravagant. She does not care for fruit herself, and we shall have to be tactful. You had better tell Mrs. Deacon to put the apples away out of sight and return the basket when she goes to her dinner.”
    CHAPTER VI
    Arnold Random walked down the south drive until he came to the lodge, where he paused for a moment before lifting the latch of the wicket gate. He was a man of medium height with a spare frame and features of the family type. Most of the Randoms had these features—dark and straight, with brown or hazel eyes. But they could be worn with a difference. In James Random they had been permeated with benevolence. Jonathan had not had them at all, having inherited the fair Foxwell strain from his mother—fair and foolish, as local gossip went. In Edward the type had reappeared, emphasized, if anything, by its temporary eclipse. In Arnold it was, as it were, refined. He had the distinguished turn of the head, the upright carriage, and the beautiful hands of the aristocrat. He could, as Lord Burlingham had once remarked, have won a prize for looking down his nose against any man in England. He looked down it now at Emmeline’s garden. Then he lifted the latch, took a few steps along the narrow paved path which led up to the door, and looked again.
    The garden was a rectangular patch cut out of the park— flower-beds and roses on this side, and vegetables at the back. It should have been meticulously neat and tidy—a lodge garden should always be tidy. In point of fact it never was, and never had been since his brother James had let Emmeline have it. Arnold frowned at the recollection. It was not that he had any objection to flower-beds as such. He could recall a very neat and tasteful arrangement of scarlet geraniums, yellow calceolarias and blue lobelias, never a dead bloom, never a leaf out of place. But that was in old Hardy’s time. Ever since Emmeline had been here things had been going from bad to worse.