Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym Read Free Book Online Page B

unmarried clergyman could never be too careful, and he had already had a good deal of experience of the consequences of the very slightest indiscretion. He had thought Miss Morrow so very safe and sensible, essentially the sort of person who could be relied upon to do the right thing. Was she going to turn out like all the others? Was she going to noise it about North Oxford that she had been the cause of the curate’s nonappearance at evensong? For it had really been her fault, he told himself, working up his feelings against her. She had said that she knew the way back and how long it took, and where and when one could get a bus. Perhaps she had deliberately trapped him, he thought, getting more and more angry; perhaps she hoped that she was going to catch him. His mouth set in a firm line and he walked on without speaking.
    ‘Do you honestly imagine,’ said Miss Morrow, quickening her step to catch up with him, ‘that Miss Doggett would have left us alone together in the house if she had thought that anyone could possibly think anything of it? She herself would be the first person to make a scandal; she always is. And yet she goes and leaves us together in the house. What do you think of that?’
    ‘Well, she couldn’t have taken me to Tunbridge Wells,’ said Mr. Latimer obstinately. ‘I’m not a pet dog.’
    Miss Morrow felt that she wanted to giggle. ‘And she never takes me because she moves in rather high society there, and she likes to leave somebody at home to see that the servants behave and don’t poke among her things. So it was quite natural that she should leave us both. I really think you’re making an unnecessary fuss.’
    ‘Well, I didn’t start it,’ said Mr. Latimer crossly.
    ‘And I’m sure I didn’t,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘Anyway, nobody will ever know about it unless you tell them. I only said you could blame me if you wanted to.’
    ‘We’re getting into the Banbury Road,’ said Mr. Latimer suddenly. ‘It seems to be full of people. I suppose I ought to go into church. I shall only have missed about three quarters of an hour.’
    ‘ Only three quarters of an hour!’ Miss Morrow said. ‘You’re so anxious to conceal your movements, and then you suggest going into church in the middle of the service! Why, it would cause a sensation. Every member of the congregation would wonder where you’d been, whereas if you don’t go in, nobody but the vicar will know that you ought to have been there.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ said Mr. Latimer. ‘And inany case I’m rather wet. What are the servants going to think when we arrive like this?’ he said suddenly. ‘All wet and bedraggled, and you carrying all those trailing things?’
    ‘I often go out for a walk and come back carrying trailing things,’ said Miss Morrow calmly. ‘In any case Florence will have gone out, and old Maggie never notices anything. Just be quite calm about it,’ she added reassuringly. ‘I don’t suppose Maggie will see us anyway. We can slip upstairs.’
    Mr. Latimer rather disliked the idea of slipping upstairs. It sounded almost as if there were something immoral about it. But he said nothing. Miss Morrow, thank goodness, seemed to be behaving sensibly after all. Perhaps she was not trying to catch him. He felt almost annoyed.
    The front door of Leamington Lodge was of the old-fashioned kind, which can be opened from the outside without a latch key, and so Miss Morrow and Mr. Latimer were able to do their slipping upstairs very successfully. Old Maggie, who was sitting in the kitchen, reading a story about a girl who was a Mother but not a Wife, did not even hear them come in.
    ‘Well now, that’s all right,’ whispered Miss Morrow, when they were standing under the stained-glass window on the landing. ‘You’d better go and have a bath, or you’ll catch cold.’
    Why, she’s quite a nice-looking woman, thought Mr. Latimer suddenly, and, indeed, Miss Morrow looked not unpleasing