This Merry Bond Read Online Free PDF

appreciatively while the girl resumed control again. She certainly sat a horse well.
    “I said you were trespassing,” he continued when the animal was quiet. “You’re trespassing now, you know.”
    She stared at him with such disbelief in her long bright eyes that he felt tempted to laugh. It was incredible, but the girl really did believe that she could go where she pleased without so much as a by-your-leave.
    “I’ve always ridden here,” she said coldly. “The Ellises never minded.”
    “And you can go on riding here,” he said gently. “But I’m only pointing out that we have leased Bassetts Ponds from the Ellises.”
    “Lord almighty!” she exclaimed, and this time he did laugh.
    He turned his horse and they cantered down the trail side by side. He glanced at Nicky and noticed that her clothes were good, the mare she rode was a thoroughbred, and he wondered idly how much of it all was paid for. He knew something of Charles Bredon’s affairs and began to speculate how long he could keep going at this rate. There were good horses in his stables, but they had to be fed and credit wasn’t inexhaustible.
    As they rode through the village, Nicky saw Liza Coleman’s Bentley waiting outside the Nye Arms. Liza herself leaned out of the car and hailed them, her little painted face as bizarre-looking as ever.
    “Didn’t know you were back, Nicky,” she shouted. “Did you have a divine time, my sweet? Hullo, Simon ... Nicky, I hand it to you ... I’ll be ringing you.”
    “Crazy as ever,” Nicky said and rode on beside Simon.
    Outside one of the Georgian houses, Stella Lucy was leaning over her front gate, gazing down the street with that lost elfin look that was her chief stock-in-trade. Looking at her fair delicate face, with its great brown eyes and passionate mouth, Nicky remembered that old affair with Michael. He had only been twenty at the time, and she a child of sixteen, but she remembered how disastrous the business had nearly proved; she felt sorry for Dick Lucy. Parent to Stella was a whole-time job, and the overworked, kindly doctor had no time at all.
    Rather to her surprise, Simon pulled up his horse and started talking to Stel l a. She looked up at him with an expression that vaguely disturbed Nicky and she became aware of some fusion between the two which was unexpected and irritating.
    “I’ll be getting on,” she said abruptly. “This mare won’t stand.” She moved off up the street; Simon let her go with a casual smile and resumed his conversation with Stella Lucy.
    Nicky hadn’t been in long when the telephone rang and Liza Coleman’s breathless voice began to bubble: “Dar -ling, have you annexed our Simon already? Really rather a sweet, don’t you think? Quite the most attractive man in the district, and so eligible. Every woman in the place has been after him ... and after all, darling, what do a few shoes matter? And he can wear the old school tie and everything too ... Father’s rather an old sweet really—so downright and simple ... quite awful, my dear ... but Simon—definitely attractive, don’t you think? Come round some time darling.”
    Nicky rang off and went violently into her father’s study.
    “Do you realize that these Shands are accepted?” she demanded of Charles. “The women are actually dithering over Simon.”
    “Are they, my pretty?” Her father said vaguely. “I’m not surprised. A thoroughly personable young man, though I hate to say it.”
    “Oh, Charles—”
    “That, my sweet, is your father’s considered opinion.” He glanced up at her with a puckish expression. “Tiresome of me, isn’t it?”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    Charles’s affairs were in a worse state that autumn than they had ever been. The accumulation of years had eventually caught up with him, and situations had to be met that could no longer be postponed while he trekked blithely around the world leaving Nye to take care of itself. The tenants complained, with some cause,