When I Was Otherwise Read Online Free PDF Page A

Madeira—let us eat, drink, and make the rafters ring! Let us banish all thought of frugality, my fine rollicking fellows! Not to mention stinginess,” she added to herself.
    â€œDaisy, I may be careful, but I am not stingy.”
    â€œDear heaven! Who ever said you were? Instant death to such a preacher of sedition!” She drew forth her flashing rapier and scanned her surroundings, glaringly, for this calumnious rogue. “Daisy the swashbuckler! A true son of Robin Hood.”
    â€œAnd rather merry into the bargain,” laughed her sister-in-law, but still with a trace of disapproval.
    â€œWhat! On just a spoonful or two of pineapple juice and a bit of cream?” Somewhat atypically she made no mention of what she herself had provided. “No, but it was very nice, dear, very nice indeed. You were always a first-rate little cook. Me, I never had the patience to slave before a stove. There was always something more exciting I wanted to get on with.”
    Which wasn’t wholly accurate. She had not merely kept house for her father during his last few years but at one other period, both later and longer, had again done most of the cooking and had again, by and large, enjoyed it.
    Marsha said, “It might have been very different, of course, if only Henry hadn’t died.”
    â€œAh, yes,” murmured Dan, who always grew more than usually sentimental on spirits—and more than usually red-complexioned. “Poor Henry. Poor Henry. Just what year was it, Daisy, that you got married?” The first part and the second were not consciously connected.
    â€œ1933,” supplied Marsha, immediately.
    â€œWas it as long ago as that?” he marvelled.
    â€œYes. I’d have been eighteen and you, Dan—let’s see—”
    â€œI was five years older than Henry.”
    Daisy said to Dan: “Oh, I remember the way you and he got the giggles in front of that sour-faced old clergyman—for all the world, like a couple of silly schoolgirls!” She chuckled. “It’s about the only thing I do remember of that day.”
    â€œWell, Henry should never have picked me as his best man. He should have known! We always set each other off.”
    â€œYes, I remember that, and I remember the way in which I did not get on with Florence—of course, that wasn’t just the wedding day. Why did she have this abominable fixation over everybody’s age? As though it ever mattered ! Well, let’s simply say that while Henry was alive she and I observed a truce—and afterwards we simply kept out of one another’s way. Terrible woman! I don’t mean to be rude; I forget she was your mother.”
    Marsha didn’t look pleased.
    â€œIt was a quiet wedding,” Dan interjected quickly—then contradicted what he’d said before. “There couldn’t have been any other best man. That’s why you had to have me.”
    He smiled.
    It didn’t work.
    â€œIt all seems so immensely long ago,” said Daisy, “so wholly unrelated to anything that happens now.” She sat back, let her eyes travel round the dining room, as though seeking for something in it to admire. “And I daresay she was really very nice… If you ever got to know her properly, I mean.” She shook her head, pondering life’s impossibilities.
    â€œThe trouble was,” said Marsha—and didn’t see Dan now mutely appeal to her across the table—“the trouble was, Henry was very young. Very impressionable. I know Mother believed you had him too much under your thumb.”
    â€œHa!” muttered Daisy. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!” But her mutter was rendered inaudible by Dan, who spoke simultaneously.
    â€œIn 1933? He must have been twenty-eight by then.”
    â€œYet very young for twenty-eight,” persisted Marsha. “Though I’m sure that what really exasperated