Lucia Victrix by E. F. Benson Read Free Book Online

reaction after the excitement would settle on it; he might even miss being knighted. He had sketched everything sketchable, there would be nobody to play duets with, and the whole place would stagnate again until Lucia’s return, just as it had stagnated during her impenetrable widowhood. Whereas here there were innumerable subjects for his brush, and Lucia would be installed in Mallards with a Blumenfelt in the garden-room, and, as was already obvious, a maelstrom of activities whirling in her brain. Major Benjy interested her, so did quaint Irene and the Padre, all the group, in fact, which had seen them drive up with such pre-knowledge, so it seemed, of their destination.
    The wall of Miss Mapp’s garden, now known to them from inside, ran up to where they now stood, regarding the front of Mallards, and Georgie suddenly observed that just besidethem was the sweetest little gabled cottage with the board announcing that it was to be let furnished.
    ‘Look, Lucia,’ he said. ‘How perfectly fascinating! If it wasn’t for that blasted fête, I believe I should be tempted to take it, if I could get it for the couple of months when you are here.’
    Lucia had been waiting just for that. She was intending to hint something of the sort before long unless he did, and had made up her mind to stand treat for a bottle of champagne at dinner, so that when they strolled about again afterwards, as she was quite determined to do, Georgie, adventurous with wine, might find the light of the late sunset glowing on Georgian fronts in the town and on the levels of the surrounding country, quite irresistible. But how wise to have waited, so that Georgie should make the suggestion himself.
    ‘My dear, what a delicious idea!’ she said. ‘Are you really thinking of it? Heavenly for me to have a friend here instead of being planted among strangers. And certainly it is a darling little house. It doesn’t seem to be occupied, no smoke from any of the chimneys. I think we might really peep in through the windows and get some idea of what it’s like.’
    They had to stand on tiptoe to do this, but by shading their eyes from the westerly sun they could get a very decent idea of the interior.
    This must be the dining-room,’ said Georgie, peering in.
    ‘A lovely open fireplace,’ said Lucia. ‘So cosy.’
    They moved on sideways like crabs.
    ‘A little hall,’ said Lucia. ‘Pretty staircase going up out of it.’
    More crab-like movements.
    ‘The sitting-room,’ said Georgie. ‘Quite charming, and if you press your nose close you can see out of the other window into a tiny garden beyond. The wooden paling must be that of your kitchen-garden.’
    They stepped back into the street to get a better idea of the topography, and at this moment Miss Mapp looked out of the bow-window of her garden-room and saw them there. She was as intensely interested in this as they in the house.
    ‘And three bedrooms I should think upstairs,’ said Lucia, ‘and two attics above. Heaps.’
    ‘I shall go and see the agent to-morrow morning,’ said Georgie. ‘I can imagine myself being very comfortable there!’
    They strolled off into the disused graveyard round the church. Lucia turned to have one more look at the front of Mallards, and Miss Mapp made a low swift curtsey, remaining down so that she disappeared completely.
    ‘About that old fête,’ said Georgie, ‘I don’t want to throw Daisy over, because she’ll never get another Drake.’
    ‘But you can go down there for the week,’ said Lucia who had thought it all out, ‘and come back as soon as it’s over. You know how to be knighted by now. You needn’t go to all those endless rehearsals. Georgie, look at that wonderful clock on the church.’
    ‘Lovely,’ said Georgie absently. ‘I told Daisy I simply would not be knighted every day. I shall have no shoulder left.’
    ‘And I think that must be the Town Hall,’ said Lucia. ‘Quite right about not being knighted so often. What