A Hint of Witchcraft by Anna Gilbert Read Free Book Online

that can only be an improvement.’
    â€˜I rather liked the gushing.’
    Her father’s regretful smile brought tears to Margot’s eyes, but she was suddenly happy. For some reason she was constantly lurching from one mood to another these days. In the natural process of growing up her artless sincerity would doubtless have been modified as it was being already by exposure to Linden’s adult manner. Linden never put her foot in it, was never impulsive. All the same, Sarah was not sorry when, at the end of term, Margot came home with the dramatic news that something terrible had happened: Linden had left school without even taking her exams and would not be returning to the Sixth Form.
    â€˜I was stunned. So were Phyllis and Freda. It was the most awful shock. Did you know it was going to happen?’
    â€˜Marian didn’t mention it. What is she going to do?’
    â€˜I don’t know but it has certainly cast a cloud over the holidays.’
    â€˜Seven weeks of official mourning and then a slow lightening of the gloom.’ But Alex was less patronizing than usual: he had problems of his own and became visibly on edge as August drew to a close, bringing ever nearer the date of the examination results, bringing at last the fateful day.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Dad.’ He was white-faced and miserable. ‘I didn’t think it would be as bad as this. I should have scraped through in maths.…’
    â€˜Scraped!’ The eloquence of the future barrister had been inherited from his father. Edward Humbert did not mince his words. Things were so bad that Margot crept to her room and closed the door, to writhe in sympathy. Presently her brother’s slow footsteps on the stairs and the uncharacteristically quiet closing of his door told her that the storm had been terrible indeed. It was worse for Alex because he was so clever. Nobody would have minded, or at least not so much, if she had been the one to fail, a calamity which she prayed every night to avoid.
    It had been rather a shock to learn that Linden never prayed.
    â€˜Never?’
    â€˜Perhaps I might’ – Linden had shrugged – ‘for something very important if there was no other way. But I don’t suppose it would do any good.’
    Though shaken, Margot felt bound to go on praying. To stop now and risk failure in her exams would be foolhardy and of course there were all the other reasons for praying. All the same, now that Alex had failed, it seemed mean to pray more earnestly than ever that she would pass, especially as there were more than three years to go.
    Meanwhile Alex was granted a reprieve. After a consultation with his headmaster, the threat of sending him to a crammer was withdrawn – provisionally. Instead he was enrolled as a boarder at Bishop Cosin’s on the understanding that his nose was kept firmly to the grindstone; exeats and even games were to be strictly limited.
    Alex accepted banishment gracefully, even cheerfully and with a determination that astonished his parents, applied himself so steadily to his studies that in one year he had matriculated with honours and two years later enrolled as a student at London University.
    â€˜I should have put my foot down earlier,’ his father said. ‘A disciplined life with no distractions was what he needed.’
    â€˜He came to his senses just in time,’ Sarah agreed. ‘We have a great deal to be thankful for.’
    Margot felt rather sorry for her misguided parents who flattered themselves that they and the masters at Bishop’s had worked the miracle. She could have enlightened them as to the true cause of the transformation but she held her tongue.

CHAPTER V
    Lance’s first appraisal of Linden’s looks and manner had been impartial. As his father might have diagnosed in a patient a glandular disorder or a shortage of protein, he had diagnosed in Linden a difference.
    But that, the younger girls